What's changed in the last 3 years, surely neither competition has change quality too much?
2012 beat pretty much a full many team
2013 lose by a couple of points to a full Melbourne team, in a game where we actually bombed a couple of tries and was missing Hardaker
2016 SL teams don't have a chance??????

The other side of the raising the salary cap argument is if it were increased it would allow SL clubs to attract some top NRL players who will bring their superior skill set that you mentioned for the benefit of the SL paying public (it is after all an entertainment business) and perhaps it would even increase attendances. Also some of the NRL recruits attitude and professionalism would rub off on our younger players leading to an improvement in standards at SL clubs.

We've been worried abut playing youngsters in the halves, yet the Rooster's halves last night were I think 19 & 20 plus they had an 18 year old centre.
There are 2 major differences between us & the Aussies, the length of the off season allowing them much more time to spend on conditioning & skills development & the overall RL infrastructure. Until we address that we will never regularly compete with them at club level.

That is the last thing the game can do, its what it been doing or 40 years. We can be better. We can beat the aussies. We can be the best and biggest RL nation in the world and we should never stop trying and never accept anything less. 'Good enough', is never good enough.

A few observations to go along side Seth's and other's - The salary cap does have huge influence in terms of pool of top class players available to NRL v SL. Anyone who has spent time in Oz knows that Saturday mornings you will see all green spaces around in the suburbs are sports facilities and are full of youngsters enjoying a session of some sport training, skills sessions etc.- all year round! Parents spend their weekends ferrying kids to and fro. If not on these green bits then they are on the beach doing something else athletic. The kids are not ploughing through mud, freezing their little bums off, crying with pain when they get kicked, get a clod in the eye etc. Our kids are great and our parents, who do stand on the touchline shivering, are great BUT we can never compete with the conditions that our youngsters grow up in, learn skills and tactics in etc, and if they make it to the top in SL it is a special thing. In Oz it is not so surprising. In the UK the majority of youngsters, especially south of Yorkshire, of course, are probably either still in bed, playing with their phones or ipads or their interest in sport is confined to the overpaid, shamsters chasing a round ball around. This country's obsession with soccer, the size of the crowds, the vast amount of money invested in advertising, players, TV rights, the high focus on any related story etc etc is staggeringly incomprehensible. The virtual ignoring of RL, by comparison, is another factor.
Generally we are not on a level playing field with NRL except for the passion and desire shown by our best and most talented. Sadly Saints forgot that last night and KC's delusion probably added to that. He did, after all, look and sound as if he was about to open up at the Car Boot Sale!

It is pretty obvious - the quality of NRL player coming to SL has dropped off significantly due to our inability to compete financially. As a result the overall standard of the league has dropped - the reverse has happened in the NRL i.e. retaining of more quality and an increase in the overall standard of the league. Simple really.

Give Leeds Sam and Tom and Wigan George Burgess, give Saints Graham back, Let leeds bring back Hodgson instead of bringing in Falloon and Saints keeping eastmond instead of bringing in Burns and we would be a lot closer now.

Makes no sense for the game to be spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on coaches, facilities, and wages to develop a young player who leaves before his peak to go and strengthen our competitors.

About 2mil extra cap has been added to the oz cap in the meantime

Maybe I didn't phrase myself very well. Yes we should strive to be the best, my life's work has been at the very centre of contributing to that focus. I do however feel that RL fans are too quick to put our game down, it is possible to challenge it's weaknesses whilst also enjoying the product we currently have and being realistic about the comparative infrastructure challenges we face (not least having a player pool less than half the size of Australia, while the new Zealanders get to play in the intensity of the NRL every week).

We are always going to be behind the 8 ball due to the nations obsession with football, but there is (and should be) a great deal more we can do to engage more players at all levels and develop the athletes we have better at an earlier age.

Quote: ThePrinter "Are you still going on Sunday JUST TO WATCH ONE SINGLE PLAYER and then struggle to figure out why Englishmen look like rabbits in headlights against them??? You're the poster boy for the English mentality ting themselves in awe at the mere presence of an Aussie Rugby player......I bet your heart flutters at the sight of Thurston's girlish hair. (BTW I don't care if he is the best player in the world, his hair in the promo pics with Burrow is fu**ing awful unless you're Miss World 1962)'" You bet I'm going tomorrow to see a genuine star quality player and one of the best players in the world of Rugby League in Thurston I'm also going to see several other star quality players in that Cowboys team, just like I did two years ago when I went to see several genuine star quality players among the Melbourne Storm team. I'm definitely not paying good money to watch Leeds or any of the Leeds players. And therein lies the quandary Super League is in --- there are next to no players of genuine star quality. And that's the problem Super League has to address. It's crap. It possesses no star quality players. You may prefer to pore over all your heart-fluttering poster pics of the likes of Sinny & Co, but they ain't star quality and they certainly ain't world class and never have been. Winning all trophies in a crap competition does not equate to greatness. I'm not the only one who is bored shiitless with the tripe on offer in Super League. See here..... www.redvee.net/forums/showthread ... keys-years

Quote: ThePrinter "Are you still going on Sunday JUST TO WATCH ONE SINGLE PLAYER and then struggle to figure out why Englishmen look like rabbits in headlights against them??? You're the poster boy for the English mentality ting themselves in awe at the mere presence of an Aussie Rugby player......I bet your heart flutters at the sight of Thurston's girlish hair. (BTW I don't care if he is the best player in the world, his hair in the promo pics with Burrow is fu**ing awful unless you're Miss World 1962)'" You bet I'm going tomorrow to see a genuine star quality player and one of the best players in the world of Rugby League in Thurston I'm also going to see several other star quality players in that Cowboys team, just like I did two years ago when I went to see several genuine star quality players among the Melbourne Storm team. I'm definitely not paying good money to watch Leeds or any of the Leeds players. And therein lies the quandary Super League is in --- there are next to no players of genuine star quality. And that's the problem Super League has to address. It's crap. It possesses no star quality players. You may prefer to pore over all your heart-fluttering poster pics of the likes of Sinny & Co, but they ain't star quality and they certainly ain't world class and never have been. Winning all trophies in a crap competition does not equate to greatness. I'm not the only one who is bored shiitless with the tripe on offer in Super League. See here..... www.redvee.net/forums/showthread ... keys-years

just looks like a bunch of peeved fans sad to have slipped from the top of the tree to me william not much else.Cant really say i blame them, having watched champagne rugby with the likes of Long,Martyn,Sculthorpe,Cunningham and the rest ripping sides to bits for years and winning everything this set of players must be a bit of a come down for them.I guess its how Wigan fans felt when their crown slipped.

And really, i can say this from experience of wathcing it live myself, Rugby in the 80s and 90s was of no higher standard than it is these days no matter how much you yearn for those days you need to get real.

Give me ET, Lyons, Hunt, Grothe, Currie, Izzard, Schoey, Hanley, etc over the tedium of Sinny, Burrow, Peacock, Leuluai, Hardaker etc any day of the week along with August to May seasons, proper genuine Kangaroo and Kiwi tours including games against the likes of PNG.

Super League is crap and has ruined the sport.

Fair enough if thats your opinion you are entitled to it. But how on earth do you propose in this day and age we go about bringing over names of the calibre of the Aussies you mention? its impossible with disparities in cash available. Even if we were still playing september to may there is no way Aussie clubs would allow their top players to come over during our winter.Times have moved on.

Probably the best sporting analogy for rugby league in the two hemispheres is British cycling and the rest of the world.

Under Dave Brailsford, GB cycling focused on the one percents. The marginal gains that on their own don't account for much, but put together help you to be ahead of your competition. Players in the NRL do everything to a marginally higher standard, but when combined and put into pressure situations those marginal gains make for significantly better teams.

NRL players grow up being coached to do the simple things to a very high standard before they get anywhere close to being in first grade. There are young players in the Academy systems at SL clubs who have massive gaps in their skill sets. They've got where they are primarily on the basis of their physical attributes and being quicker or stronger than counterparts in their age group. Had they come up in Australia, they wouldn't have got close to a professional contract due to the things they can't do. They would have had to work harder at their game to achieve a degree of success, because the bar is set so much higher than it is here.

How do you raise that bar? Make it harder for players to earn Academy contracts for a start, by reducing the number of Academies in existence through mergers. Let's take it down to say 8/10 across the country run by the RFL, make it harder for kids to get taken on so they feel they have to work at the deficiencies in their game. Create hothouses where there is pressure and competition for places from both a playing and coaching viewpoint.

Raise the age at which players can sign professional contracts to 18, and strictly enforce it. We all know that 16 year old kids (and in some cases their parents) are getting inducements to sign for clubs and signing "pre-contracts". What message does that send to kids at that age, other than "you've made it"? Give them something to aspire to while they are in the Academies at 16 and 17 years old, rather than feeling they don't have to work hard and kick on.

Rather than talking about raising the salary cap to enable the competition to retain a handful of top stars, work from the ground up to improve the standard of player coming into the competition from the bottom. You don't build a bigger, stronger pyramid by polishing the stone at the top. How good would it be to see 18/19/20 year old players coming into the SL competition capable of executing all the basic skills of the game in the way that say Nikorima did for the Roosters last night? Players aren't born with the ability to execute skills under pressure, they acquire it by having to work hard and practice in order to get to that point otherwise they won't get to play the professional game.