....and I told you why sending a couple of players over was of little benefit, if any. Which is why we moved on.

Now, is it the NRL coaching methods that have produced NZ players, or the NZ junior coaching methods that have produced players capable of playing to such a level that they can beat australians to positions in NRL clubs and Brits to spots in SL clubs, and are able to beat a team selected from the best Australians in the NRL?

We should be looking at the Kiwis, because despite having only one full time club, they are able to consistently produce a great number of players capable of playing in SL and the NRL, and also beat the best that England and their 12 elite clubs and Australia and their 15 elite clubs can put together.

I can see why you came to that conclusion.

Just look where Chris Thorman is now, with everything he must have learned during his spell in the NRL.

It's not the Kiwi's that are producing the players capable of playing in the NRL is it?! The Kiwi's don't have a youth system?!

It's the NRL teams youth systems that's producing players capable of playing in the NRL. The fact that were born in New Zealand isn't relevant to the point at all.

If we're talking about the best way to develop English Youngsters, we need to be looking at what the NRL are doing because the NRL are consistently producing players of a world beating standard (Some of whom go on to play of Australia, some of whom go on to play for New Zealand).

You said we need to look at what the Kiwi's are doing, and I am (quite rightly) saying, the fact the New Zealand international team could be considered by some better than the Australia international team, is completely irrelevant when discussing how to produce good players, as the majority of both teams players have been brought up in an NRL youth system. Thus reiterating the fact that we need to be looking at what the NRL is doing, and not what the Kiwi's are doing because the Kiwi's don't have a youth system.

If you don't understand that, then I'm not arguing any more as you clearly don't get it and it can't possibly be explained any clearer.

Do these Kiwi players magically appear at 16-17 years of age in the youth systems of NRL teams?

Why are NRL teams looking to pick up young players from NZ when they have such a large talent pool on their doorsteps?

Somewhere, during their formative years in NZ, they are being exposed to coaching that makes them the equal of their Australian counterparts and considered ready to enter the junior system of NRL teams.

That's the question, and why your answers are more reflective of someone who "doesn't get it" than Richie's.

It's only a hand full of players that at 16-17 are as good as their Australian counterparts. Like maybe 1 in 16?!

Funny that seen as 1/16th of NRL teams, who use NRL training techniques, and NRL youth policiy and who are watched week in, week out by NRL selectors and scouts, just happens to be based in New Zealand.

Look, all I'm saying, is 5 of 23 play for NZ Warriors. The other 80% have been developed by the NRL. My point, which is 100% valid, is that it's the NRL that is producing top quality players, and that is who we should be learning from.

Why on earth, with all those Australian youth players, are NRL clubs signing young Kiwis?

These kids from New Zealand are top quality players (for their age) before they even get to the NRL, that's my point. What the NRL clubs then do is take these players and polish them into the players that put on Kiwi jerseys.

So how is New Zealand able to generate such numbers of these outstanding young players for the NRL clubs when their English equivalents can't do the same for SL? It's that pathway into the pro clubs and its relative success in NZ that needs to be examined as much as what the NRL/SL clubs do with their junior players.

IMV it's because Rugby is the national sport in NZ.
Initially Union but increasingly League.
At junior level I suspect that which code you play is immaterial.
Without being racist I think that Maoris & all other South Sea island races (like black sprinters) are genetically better suited to Rugby of both codes particularly since RU in the southern hemisphere at least is now much closer to RL than ever before.

There does seem to be, from the guys I've spoken to here, a fair bit of crossover with players playing both. More than they do here anyway, where many players seem to be either one or the other. Although until just a few years ago, players in 80% of the country didn't even have the opportunity to play league.