Again I might agree that they do now.

While the home unions in the Northern Hemispere have always had their 'Five Nations' it's only since the advent of official professionalism that they have added significantly with an Autumn series. Prior to '96 I don't recall they had too much by comparison to full scale RL GB Tours down under and the visits from the Kangaroo/Kiwi providing a series somewhere every other year.

Of course they had the collective 'Lions' but such events came round with less frequency. A trip to take on the 'All Blacks' being a once in a career type event.

As for the printed media IMO League is on a hiding to nothing outside the heartlands and that would also be the case in large measure irrespective of the relative merits of the two sports.

No but you miss my point I wasn't moaning about the lack of media coverage. Just giving a reason why get more media coverage. The ru team has made the last two world cup finals winning one. As a result geting honors from the queen much more exposed to media.

But to answer your question no I wouldn't want our team that don't really achive anything (England)

Heres a question for tvoc or similar - when the GB RL team was redefined as "England" did we deny ourselves access to any quality players who may instead now have to play for Scotland, Wales or NI and have they since discovered that their grandfather was not after all born in Auchtermuchty, they got confused with Bury ?

Is there ever any chance of having a competitive four nations competition in RL and would it not be fairer if the Australians split their team down into its component parts when they play us - ie State of Origin (although I readily admit that both SoO teams would p[iis[/is all over England even more than the Australian national team would)

Read an interesting stat on SSN the other week. Johnny Wilkinson England career, 1,111pts - 6 tries. That does say it all about the game.

No, he tackles well above his weight, and used to get injured a lot doing so. Apparently has been playing some good stuff.

No i ain't saying he's rubbish, i'm a fan of him myself. Just using that stat and him as an example to show how much kicking's involved in the game and why its nickname is 'Yawnion.'

by and large i think they are trying to run it more, Ashton, Foden and Cueto are decent attacking players. Fly halves seem to get their attacking instincts coached out of them, Andrew was the same, legend has it he got boll0cked for running the ball from under his own posts en debut (against romania iirc), Barnes was a cracking attacking fly half, but largely lost out to Andrew, Flood actually went through a gap for the first try

Surprised that so much goal kicking is involved in Union and that the first choice goal kicker should kick all of them ?

Not really, he's been in the full England squad since March 98.

If he wasn't such a good number 10, Stuart Barnes would have made a belting number 6 if you follow my drift.

The problem seems to be that RL fans want to turn RU into RL (hence my tongue in cheek statement above), rather than just enjoy RU for what it is, a different game.

Just for the record my post wasn't aimed at anyone in particular just based what I had read on twitter etc

However a lot of you have bitten on to what I said and it's sad how people pick it apart, two different games, two different cultures

There attendences smash ours at the minute

Lawrie, you do know it's our off season don't you....