Yep bang on. also schools need to play it more.. it has to start at grass roots for the demand for it to grow in areas outside the heartlands of League.

McGuire also has a very good short kicking game but this barely gets a mention (even on here), even though Leeds have scored a fair few tries from his kicks.

It was interesting to hear Brian Carney on the Sky commentary for the GF point out that McGuire's contribution throughout the game was a major factor in Leeds coming out on top (when everyone else was giving all the superlatives to Sinfield). He wasn't referring to his support play either.

...and cut back on te reliance on overseas players at the skills positions.

And overseas coaches.... or do we need these guys expertese to improve our young players?

i'd also consider switching the amateur game to the summer. I don't think matches this weekend on soggy pitches will help to improve the skillsets of youing kids or older players for that.

I disagree. Look at the finishing positions of teams coached by English coaches this past season.

Only the very experienced ones (Noble and Kear) made any real impression on the competition. By contrast the likes of Morgan and Matterson have made their more limited coaching experience go further - probably because of their backgrounds in the Australian competition.

At the moment we need a steady influx and rotation of Australian coaches from the NRL, just as it is desirable for the best English players to test themselves over there.

As G1 has stated, cutting back on overseas players in the key positions is what is needed. Perhaps an overall competition quota for the number of half-backs, hookers, and full-backs is needed. It could be tweaked every now and then according to other perceived weaknesses (i.e. outside backs). Hopefully the new quota rules will start to bite soon so this may not be necessary - although as Leeds now have the highest number of overseas players in their squad than they have done for some time I think we still have a way to go yet.

Easier said than done though isn't it, I have no idea what the numbers in difference is between here and Australia but football will always massively dominate over here, not much the rfl can do about that.

True, but theres still plenty of the country left that isnt really playing RL. There are many more lads in Wales playing RL now thanks to the effort the RFL has put in there.
The difficulty will always be overcoming the rugby union bias in certain regions, and as always the lack of cash available to the RFL compared to Union and Football.

Thanks for ignoring the first half of my post. I never said there was a better option. And I didn't even mention any of the other players there so I'm not sure what your point is. I was responding to someone talking about how Senior used to get stick a couple of years ago (and last year) and now McGuire is in the firing line.
You can easily go back a few years on the Virtual Terrace and find pages and pages of Long bashing.

Some of whom, if they get the right opportunities and coaching, could turn out to be a bit special if that second forty against Ireland is anything to go by.

It'll be really hard given the competition over here from other sports. However if we get our own house in order and bring in new areas we can get much closer. It wasn't so long ago that we were almost there (the early 90s). It'll take time though, there's no overnight solution to this.