Anyone seen it on BBC? Basically says Super League/ Rugby League isn't as good as it was 5-10 years a go.

Is he right? Coincidence that his team were top of their game 5-10 years a go, now they're not, its not as good anymore?

I think overall the standard has dropped but I think the top is still as good as its ever been.

The quality of the league games has dropped. Competition points not being as valuable as they once were for the better clubs has lowered the intensity of weekly round fixtures.

I disagree. There are more teams at the top competing for the trophies (which is actually the real reason a team can win from 5th - because there are more teams capable of winning). There are more competitive teams in the middle of the table. And the teams at the bottom are slightly better than they were too, think back to the likes of the hopeless Halifax and Leigh teams.

For example, compare 2012 to 2005.
2005 Leigh finished bottom with 2 wins and an average score of 16-43 compared to
2012 Widnes with 6 wins and av of 20-40.

2005 3 teams score more than 1000 points with Leeds averaging 41 compared to
2012 2 teams scoring 900+ with Wigan averaging 36.

In 2005, only the top 3 teams we really any good (until Andrew Johns gave us some late hope) compared to
2012 a pretty strong top 6 plus Huddersfield in 7th strong earlier in the season.

I would like to see better rewards for league position, but I disagree the product is poorer or that the team are weaker or that games don't mean anything.

I see what you're saying but do you not think coaches/ players think a loss in the regular season is less damaging now than what it was before the 8 tier play off was brought in. Are you still in close contact with Briers? Would be interesting to hear his/ the players point of view on it.

FWIW, I think Leeds are and would be better than 5th if the old PO system was still in place. Meaning that altho it looks like a team from 5th is good enough to win in the current system but it was un heard of to win it like that from the old PO format.

I think it was Jones-Bucanan who admitted they go through the motions most of the year and only 'get going once they can smell autumn'.

I agree with most of your post apart from this last statement, well the last bit of it anyway.

Surely the lack of value/reward for league position means that (some) games don't mean anything (as much as they should).

I'm thoroughly enjoying my RL, but, don't know how much of that is down to us having halcyon days comparatively speaking,(probably a high proportion) so it is tempered with some concern.

My concerns for the game are hugely tempered by our recent success. But the top 8 play-off needs serious review. For me, only top 5 strikes the right balance between reward for league position and excitement of play-offs (and generally I'm in favour of the GF deciding the champ).

Kick 2 teams out, which will improve quality at the bottom end, and make top 5 more palatable, but keep licensing (whilst licensing hasn't prevented Bradford/Salford issues, relegation threat wouldn't have helped any, and I could argue makes them more likely). Play all team home and away, with Magic weekend-23 games, allows for a later season start, single game over Easter weekend, but Origin series played mid-week. One-off test V France around St George's day (same time as ANZAC test therefore).

Increase the cap, so Union is less of a threat and Aussies might come over. Most radically, I'd look at some sort of draft system to better spread talent around the game-not sure how this might work, but longer term I think something like this is needed. And also look at strategic expansion of the game (look at what the NFL are doing with London-long term planning and patience are required, and on-the-road games a must.

That should sort it all out

Start with Shaun Wane's Wigan side that topped the table last year - as good as any side ever.

Whether he believes it or not we do not need our players of this game showing this sort of view about a game that needs as much positive propaganda as possible. Poor show from a guy I usually like.

Saints aren't cleaning up anymore...Thats why he's moaning...

I don't see what he has said thats so controversial.

His critical points are:

1. The speed around the ruck is slower (this is down to the refereeing)

2. 10 years ago teams were playing in different styles but now a lot of teams play the same way

3. We have had some good stand out moments but overall the last few years haven't been fantastic and we need to get back to remembering its an entertainment industry

4. "A lot of people are reluctant to release the game to the next level" - I took this to mean he thinks the administrators are not being brave enough


I reckon as Warrington fans our views are probably coloured by the fact that the last few years we have seen far better rugby from a Warrington side than we have for decades. But looking wider than Warrington, I think what Wilkin says is right. I don't think the game is as exciting overall as it used to be. I don't think there are as many players around that excite fans, than used to be.

I expect most of our fans actually agree with a lot of this but won't say it because they don't want to agree with Jon Wilkin.

Perhaps after a 50 point flogging in the World Cup semi final later this year we will start to discuss the problems in the game again.

Pretty much just negative rhetoric though, "a lot of people.." blah blah blah, he might as well have been introducing the stig on top gear. He could have easily talked the game up and said how great it was to see Leeds get to a Challenge Cup and Grand Final, along with Warrington, and win one once again. "A lot of people.." think that the league should have less teams, along as its not their club that gets cut of course.

If Saints were winning things he wouldn't be moaning i honestly think its that simple...

When the Sky coverage starts we will have enough of that from Eddie and Stevo "the best Super League ever".

Wilkin is a player, he's not a PR spokesperson for the RFL, the BBC ask him to write an article to give his opinion on the game and it's interesting to hear his opinion. People have a right to disagree with him but it reflects a view from the inside so his opinion is worth taking seriously.

Also I don't see whats so great about Leeds winning Grand Finals and Warrington winning Challenge Cups again? When the same teams win the trophies every year it's hard to believe the line that it's a competitive league and you don't know who's going to win.

You wouldn't get an Arsenal player saying yes its great to see United and Chelsea up there winning trophies.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/21063214 So how can the game be improved? Quote "We have quite a tight grip on the game and a lot of people are reluctant to release the game to the next level. "There are so many people doing great things in the sport. I think it's a mentality switch that needs to change. "If we can execute the World Cup well - if it looks good on TV, if the coverage is good and we can inspire the next group of young players to play the game - it has done its job. "What we need to do, on the field and off the field, is come up with something that works and stick with it for a period of time. "I want to see the game do well and I'm confident that the World Cup can help. "As a game, we need to get together - schools, amateur clubs and professional clubs - sort out what we want to achieve and move on from there." '" - He wants to release the game to the next level - but offers no views on how. - He wants the game to "come up with something that works and stick with it" but doesn't say what that is. - He says we need to "sort out what we want to achieve" but doesn't offer his view on what that might be. Usual drivel from Wilkin. He's the absolute world champion of talking a lot and saying nothing, certainly nothing with even a shred of positivity. I rememember when Bryn Hargreaves retired cos he could have a better career doing a day job - lots of ex players gnashing their teeth "this is tragic" "we need more money in the game" "something must be done". What? What must be done. How? Appreciate Wilkin is just answering questions but he puts himself out there as the informed player but it's the same old crap. The only reason he gets air time is because he doesn't sound like a simpleton, has an expensive haircut and isn't ugly. As for Sally's "he's just a player". Well, not quite - he's heavily involved in League13, the "rival" player's union. When this clown retires, we're going to hear a lot more from him. Something to look forward to...

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/21063214 So how can the game be improved? Quote "We have quite a tight grip on the game and a lot of people are reluctant to release the game to the next level. "There are so many people doing great things in the sport. I think it's a mentality switch that needs to change. "If we can execute the World Cup well - if it looks good on TV, if the coverage is good and we can inspire the next group of young players to play the game - it has done its job. "What we need to do, on the field and off the field, is come up with something that works and stick with it for a period of time. "I want to see the game do well and I'm confident that the World Cup can help. "As a game, we need to get together - schools, amateur clubs and professional clubs - sort out what we want to achieve and move on from there." '" - He wants to release the game to the next level - but offers no views on how. - He wants the game to "come up with something that works and stick with it" but doesn't say what that is. - He says we need to "sort out what we want to achieve" but doesn't offer his view on what that might be. Usual drivel from Wilkin. He's the absolute world champion of talking a lot and saying nothing, certainly nothing with even a shred of positivity. I rememember when Bryn Hargreaves retired cos he could have a better career doing a day job - lots of ex players gnashing their teeth "this is tragic" "we need more money in the game" "something must be done". What? What must be done. How? Appreciate Wilkin is just answering questions but he puts himself out there as the informed player but it's the same old crap. The only reason he gets air time is because he doesn't sound like a simpleton, has an expensive haircut and isn't ugly. As for Sally's "he's just a player". Well, not quite - he's heavily involved in League13, the "rival" player's union. When this clown retires, we're going to hear a lot more from him. Something to look forward to...

But what is his opinion? He isn't clear about anything, it's just poor rhetoric that people like because its not from a journalist, though as you know it was probably ghost written anyway. I'd take his opinion seriously if he had anything serious to say, bit like when jamie peacock "speaks" and the journos fall over themselves to say how great it is that he's voicing an opinion but its invariably just a veiled moan about something that players want. Great idea of his to start the season with the magic weekend in cardiff in february. Players have their own interests at heart, which is why i take anything they say with a pinch of salt. I suppose it is better than someone rolling out the standard idioms.

Take your point on the league and cup, but we didnt win it in 2011, we were crap in 2009 and somehow beat Wigan to get to the final and were underdogs in 2010. 2012 is probably the only year out of the 3 victories that we were any good. The Grand final is different, Saints have had a hell of a run since 2006 but fully deserved it, its a format that does well for Leeds and Saints. The league is different again with five different winners in five years, with saints dominating before that.

There are lots of things wrong with the game, mainly to do with gary hethrington and his tinkering of systems to suit, but given a chance to talk about it to a wider audience why choose to be negative?

That's nonsense to be honest. Wilkin was always there with a constructive opinion even when Saints were good. He's one player that isn't afraid to speak out and he's been banging on about SL's and international league's failings for years now.

You lot probably can't see it because you are watching your sides best team in, well, probably forever. The rest of the league (Of which 2 or 3 are as good as Warrington) look incredibly weak by comparison with some of the great teams, even of the Super League era.

The whole sport in this country is a complete mess. It's the sporting equivalent of a 15 year old car that hasn't been serviced once. Most of the regular season games are a complete shambles, not because of this myth about the playoffs killing the league games, but because the standard on the whole is so shambolic that it's impossible for the games to have any intensity or edge. The vast majority of SL teams are incapable of defending to any reasonable standard and most of them can't execute a simple, structured, gameplan properly.

The big push to slow down the play the ball and make it more like the NRL just hasn't worked. In the NRL the slow play the ball results in team's respecting possession and territory and often plays out like a game of chess until one team becomes desperate. The quality of the playmakers and the solidity of the defenses makes it good to watch. In Super League it's just painfully slow and pretty farcical in terms of quality. At least when there was a quick play the ball, teams could get some momentum and play some exciting, off the cuff rugby. But with it as slow as it is now, it just results in teams playing 5 drives and a kick, or more often than not three drives, a pass to ground and a knock on. At least half the teams in SL look incapable of scoring other than off the back of a penalty or two.

If you can point me to where he's being constructive in the interview give me a shout i'm all ears..

What a ridiculous benchmark to set. Yes, Wigan aren't as good as they were in the 90s; Hudderesfield as Wagstaff's boys; Saints as Murphy's crew; or Salford as the orginal Red Devils. But when in one season has there been a league when most clubs had sides that could compare to their greatest ever?!

If we look at the SL era, I would say Bradford have had the main period of dominance in their history; Leeds can rightly claim to have their most successful period ever, and Saints can probably say their early-mid naughties team matches that 60s side. Our current team is probably on a par with our 30s team in terms of quality/standing in the game, though more successful in trophy terms, is probably equal to the late 40s, and just falls short of the mid 50s team - which I reckon it would have matched had we won the GF (and a SL title this year probably still matches Bev, Bath, Helme et al).

So Leeds and Warrington currently have two of the best teams in their history. Wigan last season were on a par with their best SL teams (and were only out-done twice by that great Leeds team). Bradford have reverted back to historic type (i.e. insolvency!), Saints are suffering the slow decline top teams suffer after a peak. Hull seem to be getting back to their peak of the last 25 years. Catalans probably had/have the best team in their admittedly short history.

When Saints were at the height of their powers we had sides like Halifax & Leigh around who were weaker than anything on show now. We had a Bradford team capable of putting 84 on a mid-table Wire side. We had a guaranteed top 4 each season, with the rest fighting for play-off crumbs.

There is an issue of in-equality now, but let's not pretend it's worse than it has been throughout SL. And it's better that the early-mid-90s!! And as for issues over the way the game is played - that's a matter of opinion. I believe the Wire team of 2011 played the most entertaining rugby SL has seen, alongside Saints under Millward, and Leeds under Smith.

My point is, we have a World Cup coming at the end of the year - an international competition that is set up as well as it could be given the current global position of the game. I would have though Mr Wilkin would have wanted to show more positivity towards that, in his testimonial year, than to bemoan the standard of the game. As the self-appointed spokesman of SL players if he can't come up with worthwhile suggestions (and IMHO the players can only offer significant insight into matters of safety, and to some extent finer rule points) then he'd be better keeping it shut.

Well said to those knocking Wilkin. It's all too easy to moan things aren't right - we've got plenty of people queuing up to do that within and outside the game. RL has always suffered from that. What we are lacking is people identifying properly thought through, workable solutions to things. And people capable of implementing them. And ideally a lot of money to help fund actions!

And as I said earlier, I disagree that quality is lower.

There will always be games in whatever league structure you choose, whose result has little bearing on the competition. But that doesn't make the game meaningless or uninteresting to watch. Go back only a few years and we had the "big 4" who were almost guaranteed to clean up all of the finals appearances and trophies. Surely that made more games meaningless than now, yet things are supposed to be worse now?!

As I said, I'm not convinced the current top 8 system is right, but I'm encouraged that teams other than Leeds, Saints, Wigan and Bradford have been making the finals and winning trophies in the last few years. Leeds' dominance and particularly their repeated ability to win from 5th has admittedly not helped the perceptions. But my view is that the SL Trophy is reward for the dual ability to negotiate a 27 game league season plus make it through a high pressure playoff series. If we had top 5 instead of 8, then there would be more chance of getting the playoffs intensity to an appropriate level and it would make the league season more intense too.

"The game is unrecognisable to the game I played 10 years ago. Saints don't win things these days and its not fair

"Saints ruck speed is slower. The play-the-balls were much more unstructured back then. The likes of Keiron Cunningham were given a free rein to do what he liked because we were the best team.

“I want to see the game do well and I'm confident the World Cup can help”

"In my time, Saints have come full circle a few times. Saints tried to speed it up, but I think Saints are in a bit of a slow patch at the moment.

"Also, 10 years ago, you could point to every team and say they were trying to do something different to try and beat Saints. At the moment, there's an argument that quite a number of teams are doing the same kinds of things and therefore Saints aren't good enough to win things.

"I love the game, so I'll watch Batley against Whitehaven in the rain and I'll enjoy it. But as a wider spectacle, I don't think the last few years have been fantastic for Saints.

"Parts of it have been great and there are always stand-out moments but, as a whole, we need to be conscious that it's an entertainment industry Saints are in and Saints need to entertain people."

I think this is what John is actually trying to say.

awwwww diddums...did the trophy cabinet get thrown out with the ground move?..guess they don't need one at the moment.

Wilkin clearly fancies himself as the mouthpiece of the players, in much the same way as Rio Ferdinand does in football, and is trying to maneuver himself into some fanciful anti-establish maverick stance.

If he really wants to change the game in his new capacity, and not just raise his own (and Saints) profile, if he really wants to reflect the genuine concerns of players then I suggest he raises his concerns together with some constructive solutions and engages with the governing bodies. Spouting negative views without balancing them with some positivity, that just happen to coincide with the decline of his own career and Saints trophy-less career, just make him look embittered and like plenty of union "reps" ........ me-me-me-me-me

There's some childish reactions on this thread. Tony Smith has some strong opinions on things that need improving in the game and the Wigan fans are always going on like this "he's moaning again" "he can't handle it that his team are bottlers in the playoffs".

Wilkin is pretty much right in what he says. Yes we all know Saints are not what they used to be, and the other factor here which nobody is bringing up, is Wilkin isn't what he used to be either, he is a declining player like Wellens and some of his teammates. But he is right that SL is not what it was a few years ago in terms of quality.

For me the evolution of SL went like this:

1997,1998 the quality was poor. By 2000, 2001, the quality at the top had improved, but there was a big gulf in class between that and the rest of the league. SL took great strides in the next few years. The quality of coaching improved and the quality of overseas imports improved so even the teams at the bottom had good players. A great barometer for the improvement was Iestyn Harris, he was a dominant player up till he left for union in 2001, good enough to dictate matches on his own. When he came back in 2004, he had been playing quite well in union, and he wasn't too old by any means, he should have been in his prime, but from then on he was a good rather than great player. Weaker teams that would have been shredded to pieces by Harris a few years earlier were now able to deal with him. He had not had injury problems or anything that would have made him decline, I think SL caught him up rather than him slip.

2005 the game was at its peak. Not only had the smaller teams raise their standard but at the top you had three genuine top sides, Saints and Leeds more or less at their strongest in the whole of SL, and Bradford was the last throw of their great era, and they played unstoppable rugby near the end of the season. Then you had below them the likes of Hull with Swain, Kearney, Blacklock and those guys, and a resurgent Warrington with Andrew Johns at the end of the season. SL wasn't just good for quality of players then, it was brilliant for quality of rugby and excitement of the competition. I mean....Andrew Johns....would this happen today? Would you get Billy Slater or Jonathan Thurston signing for say Hull or Hudds?

Since 2006 I think there has been a decline. I think the middle/lower clubs are still decent, and stronger than they were a decade or so back, but at the top there has been a falling off. Bradford went to pieces, Saints have had a decline, even Leeds I think have been in slow decline, just with a great core of players who can win them big games at the end of the season. The teams that have risen up, are us and Wigan. Wigan from their low ebb - in that mid 2000s era when SL was at its strongest, they were crap, and they got hidings off a strong SL which was fun for us all. But is the current Wigan side a great one? I don't know if it would necessarily beat the Wigan sides of Frank Endacott or Stuart Raper. Warrington I think are a strong side but the fact we haven't pulled away from that Wigan side is a slight downer for me. I have to say had this Warrington side been around in 2005 I don't think we would have finished higher than 4th. But if you put us back to 1997 against that Bradford team that went through the season nearly undefeated the game wouldn't have been close, we would have smashed them out of sight never mind the rest of SL.

So I don't think SL is at its worst, but there has been a definite slip since the peak of 2005. Great as Leeds achievement is to have won all those titles, I think they have dominated SL because their decline since 2005 has been slower than Saints and Bradford. I don't think even Leeds have improved, they have always been on a slow downward path.

Interesting how perspectives can differ. I can't say your view is wrong SC, but I do disagree with it, as I do with Wilkin's assertion that the game isn't as exciting as 10 years ago.

I nearly crashed my trolley in Sainsburys earlier too: who should be on the front of League Express, but Jon Wilkin, calling for more positivity in the game...

I'd generally agree with sally c's overview, except there are too many games in SL where the losing side has clearly thrown in the towel half way through the game. Most of the cricket scores we see can be blamed entirely on the losing team giving up any serious attempts to continue defending for the full game (including Leeds a few times last year - some of the 'defence' against Wigan would have embarrassed an U12's side). That's an attitude that ALL clubs (including players and fans as well as coaches) ought to find unacceptable.

The overall decline in quality is down to reduced imports from the NRL and before that RU. Right now there is a real lack of quality imports across the competition (plus a few high profile departures to RU and the NRL).

The question is does this represent a permanent lowering of standards, or will things pick up once all clubs get used to having to produce their own players to make up the core of their team, and so have to focus on youth development?

The reason I ask is that if we can produce enough better young players, then standards will lift back to where they were, although it will take a few years. If we can't then standards are destined to drop even further as the few remaining quality overseas players retire.

My own view is that some of the current crop of young backs around SL (far better than a few years ago) suggests that it is possible, but I'm not sure that we won't have to decide to reduce SL to 12 if we want a long-term sustainable quality SL.