in oz the origin is where they first played I believe not where born (example Tony Carroll) if you limit it to where born a lot of lads born outside of the two counties miss out and for lancashire that includes St helens, wigan, salford and widnes. so I think prehaps a dide based on the pennines. But it will always be difficult this is not australia which has clearly defined states.

Surely all the imported coaches are in possession of that knowledge already? And in spite of all the enthusiasm amongst British clubs for foreign coaches, we're actually farther away from being able to compete than we were when our coaches were home grown. We simply don't produce enough players with sufficient potential for the coaches to work upon.

If the players were better coached from a young age, would we still not produce enough good players though? It's too late in many ways when they're 17 or 18 and they come into professional academies. We need to start the conveyor belt much lower down.

Also, if the amateur game was a better environment for parents to put their kids into we would probably find a larger pool of talent coming in.

I don't believe the Australian players are superior at a genetic level, do you?

I agree with all your points. I was disagreeing with the notion that sending academy-level coaches to Australia would achieve much. As you point out, sending coaches of younger age groups might.

And no, I don't believe the Australians are genetically superior, at least not in the sense I think you mean. But they do have a substantially larger pool of players from which to select meaning that their best 17 is very likely to be better than ours.

Not saying you're wrong about the pool of players, but what are participation levels like in the two countries, in absolute terms? Are there any numbers anywhere?