When you look at the Dream Team it is the first time for 18 seasons that no overseas player has been included in the team.
Does this mean that English players (plus 1 Scotchman) are getting better, or the standard of overseas imports has dropped and what impact will this have on selection for the World Cup.
Who do you think M'namara will choose as the basis for his squad, will he bring all the NRL based players over for the Cup or will he be taken in by this Dream Team.
England could have a massive pack if he brought a couple of the Burgess Bros over along with Graham or will he have other ideas.
In the backs Read is out as he had a shoulder opp this weekend and Widdop has only just come back after 3/4 months and after 1 match back he is left out this week.
What do fans think would be the best England team.

As an aside I read an article in a paper (cant remember which) which said that Lockers would be out for the rest of the S/L season, but he would be fit for the World Cup. I find that to be a disturbing announcement.

I think it just means the standard of foreign players is at an alltime low.

The standard is an all time low & they purposely selected 13 English players.

Then why didnt they pick chase

The standard of foreign players isn't dropping, it's the fact that In English rugby league there's isn't enough money to bring any world class NRL players over along with our salary cap being a lot less than in the NRL

I think the highlighted part should read [i=#FF0040[size=150(plus 1 Englishman)[/size [/i




Regards , EW

Sorry for the clanger with the Scottish language, a friend once pointed out the unforgivable use of the title Scotch and said the only time that term should be used is when ordering one. Cheers.

So therefore the standard is dropping. It doesn't matter what the reason is, the quality of imports at the moment isn't great. To be fair though what do we want? We've always banged on about having a competition full of young English players and we have that at the minute. There are still a number of overseas players here but not on the scale of a few years back.

I suppose what we need is a balance. In an ideal world you'd probably want each team with about 15 homegrown players and 2 overseas superstars but like you say, the money isn't there to do that.

How ironic that we have all homegrown players in the dream team in world cup year ! Media driven hype !

If it is the case that the game has gone forward, give the dream team an England shirt and go out and play in the warm up game and lets see how they go !

I think that we do have some world class British players in Super League whose quality has improved generally, but the biggest issue is the lack of backbone that MacBanana and the RFL puppet masters have in picking them.
Same old same old, pick a foreigner 'cos he can shrieks of desperation, 'big names' on the sheet first who simply cannot be left off rather than picking players on form.
Don't hold much hope against the Aussies because of this, but if attitudes changed, who knows?

Il decide when iv seen them play Australia and New Zealand. Im going to edge my bets and predict that once again, people will be disappointed.

Funnily enough I feel if that "Scotsman" had placed his allegiance with England we would have a chance especially when you look at the pack we could put out.

The NRL based players along with Tomkins,Hall,Chase and a few other should mean England (if they can avoid injuries) have a really good chance of getting to the final

The likes of Hanley, Edwards, Gregory, Schofield, Offiah, Robinson, Farrell, Radlinski, Sculthorpe never won a World Cup and the current tripe is not better than them thats for sure.

So if this England squad lift the world cup that must mean this is the worst aussie team ever,yeah?

In the unlikely event that we win, yes, definitely!

ever? Not sure about that, but it would be the worst Kangaroos side in the modern era if England did win it.

There's more chance of Warrington winning the Grand Final than England winning the World Cup.

They all didn't play in one team though so naming a raft of legends doesn't make sense. I'm not saying we'll win this World Cup but there are lads in the team, that when they're retired will take a place alongside those legends.

Players like Tomkins, Hall, S Burgess, Graham, Sinfield and potentially somebody like G Burgess(and others)will be spoke about as some of the greats of our game (Sinfield more as a club player).

It's a tough ask but if they do win a big comp like this in their careers they will be held in similar esteem in rugby league circles to what the 1966 football side are amoungst all English sports fans.