Yes and yes.

Like so many others, you ignore the 2008 season, when he was completely ignored after scoring 5 tries on debut, so it's 40 games, not 21. Smith should never have got back in, after being dropped after the Quins game, when we'd lost our first three games and were losing to Quins before the substitution.

Bilko is always pretty fair with his match reports, here's what he wrote at the time:

Quins game:



Bradford game:



Practically everyone apart from Nobby could see, even in 2008, that Sam was better than Tim Smith.

Those quotes are from 2009. In 2008 Sam scored 5 against an awful whitehaven team. 2009 was the perfect time for him IMO. It was just a shame that he didn't start every game from the start of 2009. We could have finished much higher that year.

I remember his performance away at Cas to seal our play-off spot. He was already one of the best and most skilled players in the league. He is now the very best!

I agree the RFL + SL need to do something about making the 18 comp a lot more competitive in order to improve the quality of the players. Imo it should be a joint effort to stop the major top 4-5 sides swamping the talent at 16-18,s and the rest going to the lower not fancied teams. This leads to a lob sided comp with the top teams smashing all before them.

Perhaps the RFL could help fund the SL teams wages at this age group and defo not include them in the SC , this way they could try and create a more even playing field with lads feeling the don,t have to go to Wigan, Saints, etc at the expense of your Salfords, and Widnes. I know the odd superstar will always get the the main clubs into a dutch auction for their signature and that could be looked at. This could lead to a very competitive comp which only can improve them as players and therefore SL + GB.

I still maintain that if we look back over 10 years of SL + 10 years before SL, most teams would have fielded 2 or more overseas players in the spine of their team, imo this had lead to the decline of us producing top quality 1,6,7 +9,s. These players that were showing promise have either got p..... off waiting and moved to lower club for 1st team rugby or become journey men as you stated.

Reducing the comp to 10 teams would help, but if these teams are still full of "overseas journey men" or lads trying resurrect their career over here, then our talent coming through will end up playing in the lower tiers of the comp. This will only lead imo to more Aussie domination at test level.

Am I alone in thinking that the problem is not totally with SL? For me the quality of competition in the Championship is not strong enough - this should be a proving ground for young players - how many in the last five seasons have made the switch up to SL level? Barely a handful if that. Most of the teams in this league are filled with journeymen / 2nd rate imports and over the hill players.

Perhaps there is a case for having either SL clubs fielding a 2nd team in the lower levels of the game or having feeder/tie-in with teams below SL level to encourage player development. With a formal arrangement between clubs this would open up the possibility of shared training/development and player exchanges/loans.

Whilst there are many positives in the game what is needed is a thorough look at the structure of the game from reserve/U18 right through to SL level to try and produce a more structured/cohesive game. Of course this is never going to happen.

Just reduce the size of SL, that will move players down and raise the standard of the Championship, or am i being too simplistic? That would also give you a more intense SL.

Your all asking for a smaller league, dont bite my head off, but what about a bigger league?

You're all saying that clubs like widnes, cas and wakey are embarrasments, but yet all 3 of them have either beat, or run a big club close this season. If we could put 2/4 more clubs of that strength there, surly it would give more room for huge upsets, more teams for young players to break through and more competition at the bottom of the table.

ATM, the poorer clubs have about 4/6 games a season which they look at a possible win with a few upsets in there. If there was a few more clubs there, that could be doubled into 12 games they were looking for a win.

With this, surly more supporters would be attracted to these games which would increase income and popularity of the game.

But hey, thats just me, fire away

Its the money thats available that the problem. just not enough of it.

Just google NRL footy show then go on the video tab. They have the highlights of each weeks programmes