I think in sport there's an unresolvable tension between winning and entertainment.

Coaches are hired to win and judged on their record. They face high pressure to gain results now, else they are fired. This affects their incentives. Coaching innovations tend to focus on how to negate the opposition plan and how to minimise mistakes.

It happens across all sports. I listened to a great podcast a few months back about this in Brazilian football, where everybody now mythologises Tele Santana and the 1982 World Cup squad as the peak of 'the beautiful game' but they didn't even make the semi finals and through the 1980s Brazilian fans became increasingly angry that a team that they had got used to seeing winning world cups was now in the shadow of Germany, Italy etc. They then started to focus on a more mistake-free, conservative style which got them back to winning in 94 and 02. When they won, people then started comparing them negatively to Santana's team but in reality they were scathing of Santana at the time for not winning.

Today's game definitely put the 'yawn' back into Union good old kick and crap

Just a thought will the jocks the paddy's and the sheep sorry the Taffy's be siding with england on Saturday...

More chance of us winning the Grand Final

Not where I work even the Kiwi amongst us wants England to lose because we knocked them out.

The funny thing is, I suspect this hatred stems from their 'belief' that the English are all Jacob Rees Mogg types and/ or the way the English upper classes have treated any Johnny foreigner types in the past.

And the arrogance of the English to demand that the Welsh/Scots should be supporting England.

When it's the World Club Challenge and Wigan or Saints play an Aussie team, do all Warrington fans show patriotism and support their countrymen or do some of them support the Aussies because they'd rather see their rivals get beat...

To counter ...

1. Liverpool and City managed to win and entertain last season.
2. Price could hardly be considered to be under high pressure.

Yes it is possible to do it, but only a few sports teams do it because they need a) elite coaches and b) enough elite players with the ability to play entertaining styles and execute complex/risky plays at speed, to be able to do it. When you have that, you have the best of both worlds because play that stretches the field is hard for opponents to negate, hence City and Liverpool win almost every week against inferior opposition.

In rugby league, with the salary cap and general scarcity of talent both in coaching and talent on the field, it's much harder to get a SL team doing it. Warrington haven't ever been a super high entertainment team like Saints under Millward, but we had a go at playing fairly open rugby in the Cullen era and then the same in the early Smith era (peak entertainment in the time we had Solomona).

There aren't the players with the ability to execute that style of rugby now, which is why no team really plays like that.

In the context of this scarcity we probably should credit Daryl Powell and Cas who in their best form in 2017 were pretty exciting to watch, with a side that lacked big guns.

I cannot believe that there is an fundamental lack of players able to play flowing RL. I think it is the way the players are recruited and coached.

When you think back to some of the players of the 80s and 90s who had bags of flair and ability - to think they were working day jobs too.

Let's just see what we do with the raw talent of Matty Ashton....

If RL continues in this vein producing automaton robots, at the expense of RL ability, it's going to lose what dwindling fan base it already has.

Those players were working day jobs but were also playing against defences that were working day jobs as well. The levels of fitness and defensive organisation were not as good then so it was going to be easier to find space.

People also say that the NRL is getting boring these days and they have some incredibly talented players so there is some element of defences crowding out the space available.

Similar will happen with Matty Ashton. SL defences are not going to allow him the space he got in the Championship, but this might get interpreted by supporters as our coaches 'coaching the talent out of him'.

On Ashton, one thing to look for next season is how many fans include him in their starting 'strongest line ups' during the off season ahead of Ratchford, and then also how many fans criticise Price for 'not giving him a chance' later on...because he preferred Ratchford...

Totally agree..Salford away after Wembley and cas at home in playoff noted me rigid

Happy to say I didn't watch a second of it. Now, dull middle aged housewives (yes, you Zoe Ball) won't be heard, saying "can't wait for the Rugby", anymore. Well, at least until the force fed 6 Nations starts again

The final was horrific watching. An absolute bore fest, errors, a total lack of curtting edge, poor decisions, appalling passing and handling and a referee that I just didn't understand at all. A win for rugby league yesterday, no matter how boring it's not as boring as watching South Africa v england or South Africa v Wales. That said I haven't seen what Steve has in store for next season yet, I'm not excited at all.

Not a good weekend for GB or England with the quality of rugby on show in either code, or the results.

Rugby Union World Cup Finals.

England played four, scored one try and that was by Jason Robinson. They kicked twelve penalties in those four games.

South Africa played three scored two tries both in the last fifteen minutes yesterday. They kicked sixteen penalties in the three games.

Throw in a referee that's desperate to give penalties and you have an appalling to spectacle. I'm not being bitter, the best side definitely won but wow it was bad.

Rugby league is similar now, I appreciate that there is low risk rugby, but what we seen now is no risk rugby!

I've seen England play 3 Rugby League World Cup finals and I can only remember them scoring one try across 3 games (Paul Newlove!)...?

OK, GB and England aren't very good in World Cup finals.

There will no doubt be a post-mortem after England's defeat in the final. What went wrong, where does English RU go from here.

This time I don't think the idea "we need to splash out big money to get some England-eligible RL players to cross codes" will not be high on the RFU agenda. Which might seem good news but is also a symptom that English RL is not in a great place.

If you were a RL player and you had the choice of going to RU or NRL which would you choose?

An 80 minute penalty shoot out ... with scrums

Agreed. RU final was terrible but GB v NZ pretty poor, too. Missed an opportunity there. All the more important that England find a team that can win OUR world cup in 2021.

NRL without a shadow of doubt. Going to RU is a huge risk in terms of being able to adapt. I think if you're going to make a decision to cross codes, it has to be done at the start of a career. If you're in a RL academy team and a professional RU team comes in and offers you a good contract with first team options that aren't there in RL, then it makes more sense. It's worth the investment in time to learn a different game at that stage rather than going mid career when you want to be making an impact immediately and I think a lot of players don't make that impact because they struggle with the transition.

Going to NRL would be the ultimate experience in RL, if you came back to SL you would almost certainly come back a better more rounded player. I think it's great when more English players go over there and it will help the international team. I know people say its bad for the game to lose our best stars but look at France in football, the French league always sends its best stars to the elite leagues and their players are better for it.

This reflects my own view on the subject. Crossing codes is a significant gamble for both parties. I don’t pay much attention to domestic RU but I can’t recall hearing much about Denny Solomona recently and he kept Charley out of Sale (I think), although for all I know he could be injured or have been playing in the World Cup!