Anybody agree with what Sam Tomkins said give us back our best 10 English players playing in Australia as well as your best 10 Aussie players and we beat them.

Printer - that comes partly from structure as well. Nobody is going to make dummy runs if they have no idea what the next play is.

You are right about the level of involvement as well though. How often do we see Aussie sides score very quickly off our mistakes for example? In SL too many teams would take two tackles to work out what to do when they get the ball. In the NRL the halfbacks are straight in trying to take advantage of a non-aligned defence. As a result the defenders also work really hard to get back into position.

To me it all goes to show that they key players are the halfbacks, and SL just doesn't produce them. I look at that Leeds side today and the biggest gulf was clearly halfback. You swap the halfback pairings around and it's not hard to imagine a Leeds win.

We would certainly be a lot closer.

in fact put a full strength leeds side plus Sam Burgess against that NQC side without Thurston and we would certainly be in with a good shot.

Yep. I was looking forward to seeing these players like Thurston play too, but I left my applause until after the game. During it I was fully behind Leeds. Just like I was fully behind Saints and fully behind Wigan. And I can't stand Wigan under Shaun Wane.
I just don't understand the attitude of actively cheering on the opposition. Applaud genuine moments of outstanding skill by all means, I can remember I applauded some fantastic play from Lockyer v GB when we got hammered by the Aussies about 10 years ago. But that's because it was truly exceptional. I certainly wasn't cheering on Ali for instance when he was playing against us for the Kiwis just because he played for Leeds.

I find it a bizarre attitude and it feeds into this invincibility/God myth that we portray the Aussies as. I think it's also indicative of the backward, negative attitudes we have in other parts of the game too.

The aussies being invincible ubermensch and the NRL being lightyears ahead means they are uncatchable and unbeatable so we shouldnt bother trying, it absolves the game in this country.

The aussies being beatable and having strengths and weaknesses means we are accountable for our failure to beat them.

Theres no blame, no questions to be asked or changes to be made it isnt our fault we can't beat superheroes. If they are fallible, if they can be beaten well......

But this flies in the face of what actually happened though - his kicks weren't particularly good

As a Saints fan I'd just like to say well done to Leeds - you give it a real go in the first half and caused genuine trouble for the so called unbeatable Aussies with your brand and offloading.
It was good to hear B McD pre game say if we go set for set we'll lose. I only wish our own coach could see further than boring set for set RL.
Also I think injuries for all 3 SL sides has been very unfortunate. Us our best 2 players in Roby/ Perci . Wigan with both Tomkins' then McIllorum and you guys with your several missing. Whilst I don't think these players would change the overall result - it would be closer than the 30 point spankings we all received.

I thought last season that Sutcliffe showed signs of real quality, but I've yet to see anything from Lilley other than lots of effort. When you compare them (& Wigan & Saints experienced halves) to the rookie Aussie halves we are miles behind in that area.

Are there 10 English ex SL players currently playing in the NRL?

I can think of 6 obvious ones.

What a top post this is!
If only we could get the majority of young coaches to adopt the same approach and philosophy, we might give ourselves a chance of matching the best and deepen the number of clubs who could compete.

And yet they scored directly off two of them and we spilled another.

Seth!

Don't quit!

Our game can ill afford to lose assets like you.

My thoughts watching the game were that it was actually the aussies defense which was noticably more aggressive than ours. Not in a bad way, but they were so quickly off their line and in our faces we didn't have time to play. I'm not sure we are used to that level of intensity.

When they had the ball, we seemed to take a few steps forward and wait. As a result we struggled to dominate them and they made ground more easily with us on the backfoot.

In the first half there were two sets which summed this up. We were pinned down on their line and made about 20 meters in our carries and we put in a monster kick and chase, and we pinned them onto their own line. Despite their forwards having put in a hard defensiev shift, and had to run almost 90m to get back onside they comfortably made it over halfway from their set with standard carries.

Not unexpected, hope they get some confidence though from the first half. The halves were always going to be the place we struggled this year - especially with McGuire now missing, but it's an opportunity for Lilley and Sutty to settle and take responsibility. Difficult for both, one only 19 and with no real first team experience, the other with limited experience and coming back from a serious injury (clearly a while before he's fully match fit).

We don't produce halves in this country like they do in Australia, I think that's fairly obvious, and when we do half of them end up playing hooker because we can't produce them either. Halves should be able to run but that's really not what their whole game is about, Burrow and McGuire got in the team because of their speed and support play, Burrow has never evolved into a game manager and McGuire took a long time to get there and there are many who would say he's not that effective at that even now. League Freak once summed it up perfectly in a post a long time ago, We don't produce half backs, we produce little blokes who can't tackle.
Unless a half can do something exceptional running with ball in hand then he's not getting a gig in the first team and won't make it out of the U20's. There's no A team adult rugby and lower divisions are where young halves go while they figure out what real job they are going to do for the rest of their lives.

We produce the halves that the game over here demands. There is no need to run the plays NQV did yesterday to the level they did yesterday when in SL the line is so much easier to break.