A point I always find that gets overlooked when comparing the teams, especially in contests like these is the differences in salary caps. With the difference in what the NRL teams are allowed to spend it shouldn't be a shock if the teams who finish bottom in the NRL can beat or run close the top teams in superleague. They are allowed to spend more on their squads so it's surely no surprise they can have more players of higher quality within their teams? We're immediately on the backfoot with contests like these.

Absolutely. Take the islanders out of the NRL and there is a significant drop off in physicality. It's another advantage they have when you compare their talent pool includes a good amount of massive islanders and ours includes a good amount of skinny kids from council estates.


OT but I wonder, with the NRL's seemingly ever-increasing TV revenue, whether some of the NRL's money could go toward establishing some kind of Pacific Island League to try and increase the standard of the clubs there without having to get them up to the standard required in order to enter the NRL. A couple of clubs in each of PNG, Fiji, Samoa & Tonga? Sort of like Super 15's but for the Pacific Island nations rather than Aus/NZ/SA

Because there's no incentive for the NRL to give Islander kids a reason not to come to Australia.

To be fair, most of the islanders whom get signed up by the NRL are already based in Australia or were born there.