We have gone backwards, the 3 years without relegation is not helping youth just giving more money to old Aussies. Previously decent players who got promoted and then relegated would have been given a chance with a club that stayed/went up, now hardly any Champ players get a chance in SL and all the juniors are cherry picked by SL clubs. When we had P&R young players would stay local if their team was in with a chance of promotion now they go to SL, the idea SL promotes youth is rubbish.

Sorry, bit of a rant there.

Don't forget folks that we are only England now and not GB. I know GB was nearly all England but there is still a smaller player base. Having said that I truly believe that our leagues need to reduce the overseas quota to 4 player from non gb countries and sod this colpac and your great grandparrents sister was british. If you weren't born in the british isles or you don't have a parent or grand parent the was born in the british isles then you are a foreign player. It is true that we were a stronger game without this many overseas players.

No it's not.

Salford have played far more youngsters in the first team, and recruited far less foreigners, over the last 2 years because there was no threat of relegation.

I suspect the same may well be true of Wigan (except the relegation bit?!) and they've just won SL.

I'm also fairly sure that the current England squad are far younger than previous England/GB teams (especially in the backs).

There are LOTS of fault with SL (and especially franchising) but failure to promote youth is not one of them IMHO.

Who gives a toss? International RL is just another reason the RFL can give for expansion its Bulletc .

Go back to tours every few years put money into RL in the heartlands and get clubs like us Fax Fev back up into competing like they used to.

WE WILL NEVER BEAT THE AUSSIES!

Bitter or not about P&R, it was supposed to aid the development of English players and yet our national side is the worst I've seen for 30 years.

I get the feeling that some people would endorse a complete return to semi pro leagues if it meant they got to see their club in the top flight next year. Your living in the past, international competitions when done correctly make tonnes of money, money is what keeps this sport alive. If there were no Superleague then within fifteen years all the RL teams in England would just be small feeder teams with a few hundred people watching them around a roped off field, all the talent would go to much bigger and wealthier northern RU clubs.

People have to take into account why New Zealand have overtaken England. New Zealand Warriors themselves are an expansion club, they are very competitive in the NRL and export a lot of domestic talent to NRL sides. New Zealand's players play in a higher intensity competition (the NRL) than Superleague week in week out. New Zealand is a Rugby country and all the school kids who are interested in sport over there will grow up wanting to be Rugby players.

We've always had the odds stacked against us in England. Soccer is our national sport, Rugby League is played in a small geographic area and doesn't feature very highly in the national consciousness. Contrast this with RU who have amateur clubs everywhere in the country and a large player pool. It's not that Superleague sent us backwards, it's that the rise of New Zealand Warriors and the export of NZ players to the NRL propelled their international team forwards.

Well I agree with Dan and I have seen an England side beat the Aussies.

Maybe the way forward is to have a limit on the number of players a team has without a British passport. Our footie team is shocking at the international level for the same reason.

what makes people think limiting the number of over seas players will make our players better? If your a good player you will always get there, playing with the best players makes you a better player this has always been the case, the same with coaches ban all 'foreign' coaches and watch our game really go down the pan. Always play with the best and be taught by the best.

I agree about getting the best available coaches but if say one of our best talent or most promising players are held back because their position is filled by an experienced player from another country that can't be good for the long term future of our International side. Ok every now and again we see a talent like Tomkins for example coming through but maybe that is because no English club can afford to have every position filled by an Australian for example. At the moment the best coaches in the world are from the Antipodes.

It is their coaching methods that have improved over the last 30 years and it applies to footie too. How many world class players does that game now produce for our country ? We will always produce a couple of individuals with world class talent at whatever sport but I still think too many imported players stifle our National sides at all types of those professional sports in this country.

Fred by reducing the overseas players you may see an initial dip in quality and the league may suffer short term, but I feel this is a necessary step backwards we need to make to strengthen our game .

lots of superleague teams have brought in some absoloute dross from Aus/nz like Vialeki, Feka etc etc, and at the same time as increasing the numbers in overseas players we have killed off the alliance teams , so when a player is around 16-18 and isnt quite ready for superleague he has two choices , either be thrown in the deepend and fail or be put on the sidelines while an aussie plays in his position , this hinders our players development and reduces our strength in depth , only players that are exceptional youngsters seem to make it , so we miss out on all the late developers and dilute the English talent , once this become the norm schools stop bothering and people start considering real jobs rather than the slim chances or playing professionaly. In all seriousness you could pick an overseas team from the superleague that would beat Enlgand , the problem is that this team wouldnt beat either the real NZ or Aus, so to say playing the best players makes you better certainly dosnt apply to what happening in superleague

We have a stand off playing at fullback, no real pace in the centres, we dont have good wingers, we havent had a true halfback partnership since gregory/edwards/schfeild, no competition for places , its not helping our game, its really holding us back.

How many will be playing next year when there is a threat of relegation? Its not doing anyone any good if players are being picked to simply tick a box, rather than because they are good enough. It just weakens the competition.

The issue with the quality of players coming through is deeper than how entry into Super League is determined. For example, if Greg Inglis was English, he'd grow up playing in teams that just give him the ball and let him run the length of the field, or even worse, he'd end up in the pack.

It was one of the major selling points that with having SL we would eventually compete with the Aussies.
Equally switching to summer would give us all the back page headlines as we had no other sports to compete with...........

Perhaps some drastic actions should be on the agenda by Lewis and the RFL after this latest failure , a rethink of how our game is played and ran at all levels is needed , if mergers are required to create a smaller [ireal [/iSuper League of high intensisty week in week out than maybe now is a time to look at it (after all that was also in the original plan when SL commenced).

If Greg Inglis was English, he'd grow up playing football.

why do people think good rugby players would make good footballers ?

Don't know suppose it is like being able to touch your toes without bending your knees. You either can or can't. Since Wayne Rooney was in that sauna on Chapel St (according to a poster) his game seems to have gone West but I can't see him making a RL player.

New Zealand only have one full time team and, we can't live with them!

And how would franchising change that?

how many more players do they have in the NRL though ?.and they pick players from the islands i think.

Define not live with them and then repeat the score.........Seem to recall a few dodgy ref calls as well as a joint Oz/NZ VR call but alls well on the International front.

Not sure anyone does to be honest? My point stands though - how many top RL players in this country didn't grown up playing football at school/on the streets?





It wouldn't, as I said earlier, neither the introduction of SL nor the introduction of franchising were ever going to change our international game. I know that was one of the 'selling points' for both changes (as Fred said above) but hope that no-one was naive enough to believe it?!

Well, if having players playing in the NRL is what makes NZ strong then there's the answer! send our Super Dooper players to the NRL and scrap our teams! after all, Scotland & Ireland have International teams without having pro League teams, don't they!

WHAT..and dilute the quality of the NRL down to the,mostly boring,one dimentional standards of SLE.tut tut thats a shocking thought.