'Levelling up'? Are you Boris Johnson?

We're talking about a fundamental split here, between a Super League containing well-funded, City-based sides, and a Championship for the more traditional town-based clubs.

If there were sides across Europe ready to pay £5-10m per year on their playing squads, you'd have a competition similar to the NRL in theory.

Problem is you have no infrastructure. It takes many years of youth development to self-perpetuate a club. The best way to increase the quality of the competition most people criticize the SL for, is to improve the supply of quality players.

I get where Brian Mac is coming from (and he would say that, wouldn't he?), but it will be difficult to achieve this big-City template even if the game did have a unified vision for it, which it doesn't.

If we cant get big cities over here how are we going to do it 3000 miles away or Europe?

OK So lets go back to the days of Wigan spending several times more than anyone else and winning everything

There might be growth opportunities in some places - we have historical class issues to overcome in the UK, plus a much better funded RU to contend with and a national obsession with football.

However, it’s too easy to run off to the side when actually what you need to do is overcome the hurdle in front of you.

OOFF!!

That hurts as an avowed "Lefty"

So we've done religion, and now on politics eh?

You'd almost think our season was over

I have no expectations. We could win it or be relegated. F**k knows

Makes sense, both are comical and far fetched.

Any of the ITKers on here heard of the Sam Burgess rumour ? And dont shoot the messenger

I'm on the Sam Burgess to Leeds hype train don't you worry about that

Honestly, I have no idea if it’s SB, but someone involved at senior level with one of the West Yorkshire clubs told me that if Merrin goes back Leeds are looking at replacing him with a big name English forward from NRL.

They don’t come any bigger than Sammy, but 2+2 sometimes =5.