Apologies if this as already been said. I think we have to tolerate the drop in standards for a few years because it will only benefit us in the long run.

There is more opportunity for young players to come into SL sides now, instead of being cast away into the lower leagues never to improve their game. You get many late developers in sport.

With only 10 clubs the pool of potential international talent to pick from would be tiny.

I also think when a side as to pick an extra couple of homegrown youngsters it gives the fans of RL something that football fans rarely get...which is cheering on players who are fans themselves, and not some overseas player here to make a quick few quid.

Only problem with that is that almost all young people who get into RL are runts. They are poor physical specimens on the whole and will never be great at RL simply because they've not got the required attributes naturally. What league should be doing is actively going into Primary schools and identifying the top athletes, not only the big oversized monsters but also the ones with the natural ball skills and co-ordination and those with pace. If they can get kids playing RL at 5 or 6 and get them interested it should stop the current situation where our Greg Inglises and Jonathon Thurstons are playing football instead of RL.

Edited for accuracy. You can watch just as many hungry, homegrown young players as you'll ever see in RL by not being a glory-hunting Premier League whore and watching some [ireal[/i football instead.



Exactly - almost all of the top young athletic talent in this country plays football now and this somehow needs to be re-balanced. We're doomed to an eternal future of GB squads filled with Shentons and Matty Smiths otherwise.

I agree with what you're saying. I don't think we produce the kind of athletes the Australians produce mainly down to weather, as daft as that may sound.

A little kid opens his curtains in St.Helens and the likelihood is that the weather will be crap and cold. And they end up watching telly etc
A little kid opens his curtains in Australia and the weather is stunning....again. The kid goes out, plays ball games, better metabolism, ends up growing up fitter, stronger, faster...
I'm probably simplifying it too much.

For me we need to seriously reduce the imports in our game in order to improve the quality of our home grown players. Under Nobby at Wigan, Sam Tomkins was in the 20,s and not going any further ( in fact nearly on his way out ) because he thought he was not big enough. Tim Smith got injured and he had to bring him in to the team, the rest they say is h.......

There are too may overseas players + coaches in our game, a lot of young players never get the correct amount of game time in their strongest position because of this, I know results, results, results ! only matter and winning trophies because its a business. The demise started when teams like Wigan, Saints, etc went looking down under in the 80,s and don,t get me wrong I loved watching Kenny, Meninnga, Miles etc, and this trend has continued ever since.

The trade off is, our own lads never get the right chances and hence we never produce the correct amount of talent we should do. There is enough playing talent round Wigan + St Helens alone in RL to produce enough players if they are coached correctly and more importantly given the correct chances.

Its the same in the Premier league, too many foreign players and not enough local lads. How many non-Aussies play in the NRL ? not many, how many non Spanish play in their football league, not many.

If they had kept the overseas quota in and reduced it to 2 players years ago, there would be a lot more Roby,s + Tomkins knocking about in SL.

Daniel Anderson was interviewed on Boots'n'All this evening and he believes that the standard of SL has deteriorated since he was here, citing the increase to 14 teams as one reason. He doesn't think we have the player pool to support that number of teams.

I totally agree with him.

I don't think he said we have deteriated. He said we have not moved on - the level has stayed the same we have stagnated and fourteen teams he thinks is two too many.

Ditto.

He was trying to avoid being overly negative. He was going to say 'plummeted', but didn't want to offend anyone so changed it to stagnated. He's right, there isn't the player pool to support 14 teams with any real quality.