Interesting point and not something I've ever considered. What is your basis for making that assumption? Not doubting you by the way, it makes sense, just curious as to whether it's based on anything in particular.

Whilst I empathise with your view there are a couple or three flaws in your argument IMO.

You can't blame football for being succesful and these talented youngsters locked away in Premiership Academies I think that there is a high turnover, so it isn't a case of locking the door and throwing away the key and it doesn't apply in Yorkshire so surely the 'talent tap' isn't completely turned off, are their teams doing any better with junior recruitment than ours?

What do other sports do like RU, cricket and the latest popularity craze for cycling, how do they recruit in the face of the "monstrous rise of football?

I tell you what they don't do and that is blame everyone else for any perceived short comings, they seem to manage situations better than us as a sport and get on with it. We need to regroup, give our collective heads a wobble, be positive and look forward to a great season ahead and hope that 'we' can get the profile of our game up and catch the imagination of the country with the World Cup. Wishful thinking I know, but, if we are all down beat then why would anyone else bother?

It's a theory not based on anything concrete in particular but it's just a case of putting 2 and 2 together really - frankly, how could it not be the case? I don't think it could be at all any small coincidence that the massive increase in wages, celebrity status and media saturation at all levels in football, and the huge expansion in the scouting networks and youth team setups that all the big clubs have had, has happened at exactly the same time as the tap for top RL talent in this country has seemingly been shut good and proper.

20 years ago a top footballer earned about 3 or 4 times more than a top RL player maybe, and players earned more at Saints or Wigan (well, certainly Wigan anyway

) than they could do at any second division club - now the differential at the top is more like a hundred times or more and you can potentially now even earn more playing non-league footie than you can in SL. If Denis Betts had stayed at Man. Utd. way back when then he could potentially have become a top Premier league player but much more likely he'd have not made the top grade and ended up playing down the leagues earning not very much at all, and so going to Wigan instead then made perfect career financial sense for him. A kid in a similar position now would have to be looking at a pretty disastrous potential football career to not realistically be expecting to earn far more from it than any SL club could ever offer him...

Ooh - do pray tell...



I don't blame football at all and am a big fan of same. The Premiership and everything it now stands for sucks big time but that's another story...



Most certainly, but how much of a future in RL does a kid have who's been just been released from a football academy where he's been from the ages 14 to 18, say, after having played little or no RL of any decent standard at all in that period do you think? They're either simply just going to continue to chase the dream down the leagues, or go find something else to do with their life - they won't be coming back to RL certainly.



I've just had a look at a map and you're right - there are actually no big football clubs in Yorkshire at all. You'd think that someone would have spotted the hole in the market for a few in Leeds and Sheffield at the very least, but apparently not...

Anyway, even if Leeds' and Sheff W's and Sheff U's scouting and youth setups are pants, since when do geographical boundaries limit which clubs kids get signed to these days anyway? I know a 13 year old who lives in Rushden who's just been signed up by Wolves' academy, over an hour's drive away. Liverpool hoovered up Ojo from MK last year at the age of 15, over 2.5 hours away from his home. I'd wager that Man U., Man C. and Newcastle have many, many teenage Yarkshire lads on their books. I'd go so far as to suggest that the likes of Chelsea and Arsenal probably do too.



Fair points actually: I think most kids who end up as cyclists are just simply the wrong size and shape to make footballers (in much the same way as RL is still managing to produce a decent crop of forwards at the moment), and RU players are seemingly all getting bigger and bigger and less football-compatible with each passing year too, but anyway... Noone's denying that RL can't and shouldn't be doing more to try and encourage a few more kids to start coming through the ranks, but a reality check is still needed and there's no way we'll be seeing the Hanleys and Schofields and Newloves reappearing any time soon no matter what we do...

People are asking where we can get more revenue from - how do people feel about televising more games? Gates would probably drop, especially for the away teams, but how much revenue would that lose compared to what you'd gain? The most poorly viewed games on Sky still get 50,000 people watching, with the big ones getting close to 300,000, which is a lot of subscriptions and a lot of ad revenue. I wouldn't expect the same price for the 3/4 of the matches Sky didn't want, but even if you get half the Sky money (for 3x as many games) that's more than half a million quid for each club - and if we can get other TV companies interested we can drive those prices up.

If football has grown so much so all the kids are playing football then where are the great young English footballers?

The quality of young players coming through in English football is lower than it was.

And also I'm not convinced on the argument that all the great young athletes that could play league are playing football...they go down screaming if anyone breaths near them, which young footballers look strong enough and hard enough to play league?

Very good point - I think there's 2 main reasons personally: Firstly, you only need to look at the numbers of foreigners crammed into every Premier League squad these days to see a very substantial part of the answer. The big clubs cram their academies with every young player they can get their hands on and then never give enough first team experience at a high enough level to develop to most of them because they're always under such enormous pressure for "now, now, now" success and so spend 10s of millions on quick-fix foreigners to plug holes all the time instead. Just have a look at Villa to see the level of hysteria that afflicts a top-level club that tries to develop young talent at the short-term detriment of it's success instead of taking the quick-fix option instead these days.

And secondly, and probably the biggest reason for me, is money. Most players with top-level talent are on contracts guaranteed to make them multi, multi-millionaires and set for life before they're 20 now. What hunger and incentive do they have to keep on striving to reach their full potential after that? There are the Beckhams and Gerrards who are driven on for the rest of their career by something extra other than money, but for every one of them there are a dozen others who're happy turning up for training, going through the motions and collecting their 70 grand a week. How many of us at the age of 20 would have carried on living like monks and training like demons with bank accounts stuffed full of Ferraris and high living?



That's a completely specious argument and you know it. And if it was just an attempt at humour it wasn't a very good one. Consider your copybook blotted sunshine in either case.

If the argument that football has recently swamped RL held any water, why are genuine athletes like Kallum Watkins, Jones-Bishop, Hardaker, Briscoe, Charnley, Riley, Makinson etc playing RL and not semi-pro football? If anything SL in recent years has been producing better quality outside backs in numbers than it has for decades.

However, Tomkins is the first 'freak' player (like a Hanley or Schofield) we've produced for some time, and we haven't had a stack of RU converts to bolster England, or Aussie hacks to bolster SL, and there's still no sign of a world class scrum half.

But lets not pretend that Hanley, Schofield etc were dime-a-dozen, or that GB were that successful during the so-called 'golden' era - Schofield won a grand total of 2 games out of 16 he played vs Aus (and reckoned that at best half of the GB team were as good as their counterparts).

Perhaps I'm less pessimistic than others, but I look at the outside backs available to England now with a genuine sense of hope that they can at least match Australia physically - not something that could be said of the squad Tony Smith brought over here a few years ago (Lee Smith vs Greg Inglis anyone?). We also have some good forwards and Tomkins is a real talent.

I'm even hopeful that one day we'll unearth a class halfback or two given that clubs won't be able to fill 6 and 7 with Aussies.

What worries me about SL as it stands is whether there will be enough quality players over time for 13 British teams. At some stage tough decisions will have to be taken, but IMO its too early today as even if we can produce enough kids to fill the gaps left by RU and the NRL, it was ALWAYS going to take several years before quality juniors become quality first team players.

Well naturally you'd have to ask them that obviously - as well connected and influential as I no doubt am I am not in said players' confidence. But I reckon that it's because semi-pro footballers earn bugger all (with a few exceptions when a club's trying to buy it's way out of the league) - the average going rate for a Blue Square Premier League player is about 300-350 quid a week for instance. I'm perfectly sure that all of the above earn a fair chunk more than that in RL thank you very much. But again: do you [ireally[/i think that any of the above would be in RL now if they had showed sufficient aptitude at footie in their school days to attract the attention of any football league clubs? They are all in RL either because they stank at footie or just didn't play it at all. And in each new generation that comes along there are going to be fewer and fewer of them that aren't playing football...



...you must be watching a different game to me then...



No they weren't, but at any given moment in time over the last 50 years the British game has always had at least 5 or 6 players of that level around simultaneously - at times during the '90s we probably had 7 or 8 - we currently, as you say, have 1, and his days in our league are probably numbered, with no signs at all of where we might think about finding a second.



I hate to say it, but that Cinnamon fellow's post a page or 2 ago summed it up perfectly so I see no need to repeat it - but to precis: we may have been way behind Oz back then, but we were a darned sight closer to them than we are now...

We were always capable of beating Australia in one-off games, but in a series or a tour? No, not for many a year and we're unlikely to for some time.

The reasons then are the same now : the aussies have an intense domestic league competition, the most intense international "trial"matches (State of Origin and City v Country) so the players (and more of them) are used to and, more importantly, capable of sustaining that level in a tournament, tour or series.

The other reason of course is they play to their strengths. 20 years on we are still playing loose forwards at stand-off.

Like I said earlier, hopefully the absence of overpaid players might be a blessing not only for younger players, but for some of the talent in the championship just waiting for a chance to prove themselves goon enough for SL.

Wonder if Saturday's result at Langtree Park means the SL standard is even lower than last years....

I found the second half on Sunday very boring indeed. This seems to be the state of affairs for many games I have seen of late.

the standards gone right down no danger.......
When a second row forward pushes and shoves another forward and then backs off when he realises hes not as big or as tough as the other guy but still gets a little slap on chops.... and then goes all apologetic its a sad state of affairs......

wilkin should shut up or play better or tougher...unfortunately he's a niggling littel turd that got made to look like a fat schoolyard bully getting his comeuppence by the lad that spent the summer holiday learning to kick box.

Villa Mautautia would be turning in his flip flops if he saw the embarrasing excuse for a second rower that is Wilkin....

So how does Wilkin's controversial interview look now?

Same as it did then, totally lacking in substance and offering no tangible ideas on for how to improve the games failing as he perceives them.

It's a throwaway interview, not a thoroughly researched review of the game. He is 100% correct about the state of the game.