Lot of good ideas have been said on here about how to better the game at the younger ages which I agree with. The big is stumbling block still though is the 'parents' issue. Just the other week a guy at work was telling me about his son's football team. They're only 8 years old and the coach quite decently shares out the MOM around the team each week. But of course they ended up getting one parent kicking off saying his son should've won it and saying he should get it most weeks. Cue a big argument between two parents right next to the kids, shouting and the parent who thinks his son should be MOM all the time pretty much saying within earshot how poor some of the other kids are.

How do you solve the parent issue? Until you do then all the good ideas on how to learn them better at a young age can't be properly executed.

Coaching at all levels needs to be better. The current list of British SL coaches is starting to look very 'early 80s' - Fox, Murphy, Bamford in England vs Gibson, Stanton, Fulton in Oz. Just replace with Wane, Radford, Cunningham vs Robinson, Maguire, Hasler.

SL clubs should seek out the best young Aussie coaches. It would be a revolving door as they'd seek NRL jobs but you'd make sure we're up to date. In fact given the success of Brown, Maguire and Robinson (even Kevin Walters) being able to get NRL head coaching roles after stints in SL, SL could easily become to be seen as a good way of getting an NRL gig.

For all the rubbish thrown at McNamara at least he's learning his trade in the NRL. As far as I'm aware not one of the English coaches in SL has done similar, and yet that is clearly the place to learn.

thats true. If Burrow or JJB or Sinfield or whoever has their eye on the top job in Leeds, we should be using one of our many 'relationships' with NRL clubs and have them spend a couple of years as an assistant in the NRL.

Less games. JP has called it for years, you can't expect our top players to play 35-40 games a season and be as good as Aussie players who average 25 games. Our season is ridiculously long, exacerbated by meaningless friendlies

Less home games equals less money equals making it harder to pay our best players enough money to stay here.

Unfortunately you can't lop off 15+ games over here without impacting money. Most clubs are so reliant on the central funding almost any reduction in funding would send them under.

Quality over quantity is needed.

There are many problems, some will take a long time to fix. One thing we could do without much difficulty is slow down the PTB a little which would force the halfbacks to develop the craft more. Combine this with some of the other changes mentioned and we start heading in the right direction. I also think that we threw away the licensing experiment way too quickly as we now have 3 or 4 clubs permanently looking over their shoulders as relegation would effectively kill their club. You can't build a future in that scenario.

I agree that promotion & relegation prevents teams currently at the bottom from being able to take their time to develop their own players.
Soccer & English RU are both blighted by this which means that the top resources are concentrated on the top few clubs.
The NFL, NRL & Southern Hemisphere RU are not subject to this so clubs can properly develop their own players even where there is a salary cap.

The aussies had some damn good fends too xD

Goof parenting in general is an issue in society full stop - way too many want a 'quick and easy' approach, leading to issues with diet, discipline, respect etc etc etc.... However that's a whole different subject - the issue you mention above (which is also one I've experienced) should be resolved with a quiet word in the ear of said parent about how and why it's done the way it is, and they either support it, or take their child elsewhere.... The same applies to he idiot parents who think match days are all about winning at all costs, and those who are getting a little too excited on the sidelines, or calling for their kid to 'smash' the other team....

At junior level, the game has to fundamentally be about the kids enjoying it and getting better with time - not 'smashing' the other team, either physically or metaphorically...



There are lots of things we could tinker with at the top level of the game to make us slightly more competitive, however that's a short term 'paper over the cracks' and will only really impact our highest level players, who aren't a million miles away... We need fundamental changes to the juniors to give us a larger pool of players in the game, and subsequently a larger number of elite players.

I echo points made about coaching, not just at the top level but right down to juniors, it's not on the same level.

In turn this hinders the competition as a whole, there is a clear divide between the top and bottom clubs in super league, no matter how many top stars they sign (look at Salford, look at some of the players Catalan have and have held too), the coaching just isn't good enough from that mid point to the bottom, I think the fact 6 different NRL teams have won it over the last 6 years, where as 3 super league teams have won our competition in that period and further back highlights this.

The english players must have been exhausted after the first few rounds going off the wcc results...

daryl powells sabbatical

Get rid of Association Football. Stop every lad in Britain dreaming of £100k a week.