A lot of rubbish has been talked about League in NZ. The Warriors produce a lot of juniors - in fact they just one the juniors comp? With many been signed by for the first team and a few for other clubs. TBF most of the current problems have been caused by ineffective administration - sound familiar - but that has now been sorted.

Many areas produce juniors that actively recruited by other NRL teams.

Granted Union is bigger, but kids often play both one on Sat and one Sunday, but league in NZ has one thing union does not. We have Sir Peter Leitch - the one and only Mad Butcher!

Number of games, don't know. Same age, undoubtedly. In fact, considering the style of player Smith and Ashton are, they'd probably have looked better against France than Widdop did.

You can probably tell from my post how frustrated I am at the basic skills levels, of course there are always exceptions and we have a couple of very good young lads who could make the grade in my opinion, however (and this is where McLaren's Big Daft Lads Theory comes into effect) they are generally the slightly more intelligent kids who instead of continuing playing RL at amateur level will be put off by the too often aggressive and intimidating atmosphere, concentrate instead on GCSE's and A-Level's and get a decent job instead of RL. Whereas the thick as 2 short planks lads will happily carry on.

You're absolutely right about the Aussies game, they grind and grind and do the basics well time and time again until we c0ck up and then they know what to do at the right times, whereas ours too often need someone to tell them what to do next.

Without wanting to make this a nice little love-in I sort of agree with everyone. In that I agree with Batley that there is a significant element of junior coaches who are in it either for egotistical reasons or to advance their own child's cause, and I agree with Richie that there are an awful lot of people who are in it for the right reasons and give up an awful lot their time to try and help the game.

I don't necessarily think the problem is with the coaching course itself since you can only do so much and only expect so much from volunteers. 4 days worth is already a significant commitment from volunteers who also have to go to work.

I think the problem lays with the Barla set up and more importantly some of the old farts within the Barla set up. My brother has just moved down from York to Nottingham and having watched him play in the Barla league to now be playing in the Conference I know which I enjoyed more. There were no drunks shouting abuse on the sidelines, no club officials going crazy at ref's decisions, no "linesmen" from each side attempting to screw over the opposition and just a much happier, healthier atmosphere to play the game in. It appeared that people were playing the game to enjoy playing instead of playing it to prove who's hardest.
How many times in Barla have teams and players been up before the "disciplinary" after committing what can only be classed as assault to receive a pansy @rse punishment because the "disciplinary" like the club/player/officials involved.

Until we get rid of that aggressive, backward element the more intelligent kids will be put off the game and we won't get rid of the "bad" youth coaches within the game.

I don't know much about the Conference to be honest and I'm sure it has its own problems but having watched a few games I know which I'd rather be in. I'm even considering coming out of retirement!

Got any North Leeds based clubs in mind there Rob?

The administration at BARLA makes Will Carling's "57 Old Farts" seem like cutting edge progressives - it's the same people running the same committees who have been around for 20 years or more scratching each other's backs.