Ooh, ooh I know this one. Does it involve you telling all and sundry to shove their dying sport up their s, followed by you leaving RLFans for good, again?

Hope so.

They're doing a good job on you. Don't you go to all home and away games?

You mug.

The PL is consistently trying to attract better players to improve the quality of its offering - the improved quality is reflected in attendances and world wide demand for their brand - would you not agree?

Ah, but i said England football, not PL. Don't know the facts, but I would imagine that they are the richest international brand (Spain & Brazil could compete I guess), they sell out Wembley for even meaningless friendlies. Considering the dross that they have served up for 46 years (I consider the 1970 squad also to be internationally competitive & attractive), then they haven't done a bad job of fooling an awful lot of people for all of 46 years.

The PL is a more complicated beast, being the world's richest football league. They can & do attract some of the best talent from around the world, thus attracting Joe Public to see the latest Azerbaijani (et al) sensation. In monetary terms, I would imagine comparing EPL to, say, the French Ligue 1, is similar to comparing the NRL to SL. Of course there are far fewer players in the world pool to pick off in RL, so they get the cream of SL, New Zealand & more importantly the South Sea Islanders.

I guess it's chicken & egg situation. You cannot improve the standards & offering of SL without a much higher income. You cannot massively increase your income when the product only has a relatively small customer base.

True, you want value for money and RL can improve and be better......but that wasn't my question. What is the unrealistic obsession that we have to match some other country that has differing interests in sports than in England? Would anyone expect or demand British basketball or American football over here to one day match the US versions? No clearly not because of how big they are over there and how the pathways regarding juniors are worlds apart. Now I agree that's an extreme example to highlight the point but it still gives the jist of what I mean.

Their is a difference between wanting the sport to improve & be as good as it can be, and looking over at another country and unrealistically wanting to be at their level and anything below that level has to be pronounced as sh*t.

Once you stop aspiring to match the very best you will start to go backwards - British Cycling has shown what is possible with the right management and methodology. If they had taken your view that they could never match the Aussies or the Kiwis because: participation levels were poor , facilities were terrible, lack of quality athletes because of soccer, poor weather - most training is still done outdoors i.e. put up all the barriers you are suggesting are holding back RL in this country they wouldn't be the envy of the world that they are.

I don't understand why it's even brought up anymore. Only reason seems to be to belittle the achievements of this Leeds team in recent years and to try and put us in our place.
As it's mostly one person - who surfaces whenever he scents some blood in the water - the simple solution is to use the ignore function, works a treat (unless someone quotes him).

I think you have to beware of over-simplification when comparing eras of the game. So many variables have changed. There’s a lot more influences on player performance than the season the game is played.

For instance back in the days of Millward and Murphy I’d expect that participation in RL was at a higher level in the UK and at a lower level in Australia compared with now. That’s the impression I got from reading Mal Reilly’s book where he described the explosion in participation that took place in Australia in the early 70s. With their monopolisation of young athletes in NSW and Queensland Australian RL didn’t have to compete with soccer.

I’d strongly suspect that in the UK the proportion of children and adults participating in playing soccer has increased since the 60s in comparison with those participating in RL which I expect has fallen.

The game of RL in the UK has a much harder task now to attract the young Millwards and Murphys than it did in the past. Where are they? I bet they’re playing soccer.

Take also the subject of money. The Australian game attracts far more in sponsorship than the game in the UK. That has a knock on effect at all levels from the grassroots upwards meaning standards of coaching, facilities etc are much higher. That means they not only have a much larger pool of talent but can give them a higher standard of tuition in the game too.

That’s been the case since the early 70s so it’s no coincidence they’ve been better than us since then. The gap opened up then and has never really closed.

It’s not likely to change either.

Whether we play in summer or winter may not make that much difference when you look at the wider context.

I think it more a case of putting the achievements into a wider context - the WCC hinted at where the best in SL are compared to the best in the NRL.

So when we won the WCC in 2012 that hinted where the best in SL are compared to NRL. When Sinfield won the MOM in the 2008 game did that show where he was compared to the NRL players.....or does it only count when the Aussies win?

I don’t think looking at WCC results is a decent enough sample to make judgements on the qualities of either competition.

Too many variables.

So presumably there was a hint that the best in SL was superior to the best in NRL in 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 & 2012?

Agree with Biff, DHM & Bullseye.

It's also not as simple as cycling. With cycling you can focus on a very small elite group, you can't do that with RL.

The issues in the game that need addressing and that are the causes for the gap between us and the Aussies are not easy to solve and possibly can't be for a very long time.

It should also be noted by those who hark back to the time when we were matching the Aussies, as to what the game did wrong to cause the issues we see today. Because the issues of today have their origins in that period.