Why would you say that? All I'm saying is that you can tinker with those issues all you like but it's not helpful to state that it's the reason why we're losing when I distinctly remember us losing to the Australians before those tactics came to the fore.

Quite right. We need to get more people playing the game over here then we'll have more top quality players making it. That's what happened in Australia in the 70s to put them ahead of us and is the reason they've never been surpassed.

BTW that Bulls side managed to beat Saints a few weeks back

When your own teams fortunes aren't looking too good. It's quite often that one think's the standard of the comp is diminishing. Funnily enough I felt the competition waned somewhat between 2003 - 2009. Yet strangely enough from 2010 onward's I've never felt the need to question the quality of the league.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but during the period between the inception of SL and around 2008, when the quick PTB rules and wider defensive lines were changed, British RL managed to develop some great halfbacks like Long & Deacon, who had all the skills.

I think your recollection of that period is skewed for some reason. Yes, Saints exploited the gaps from DH (I'd say revolutionised DH play in the UK) and were always waiting for that player slow to get back into defence, but our gameplan was much more varied than that, and few other teams consistently utilised the DH to any great effect.

I reckon because Saints had the standout hooker of the SL era in Cunningham (backed up first by Higham, then by Roby), quite a bit resentment built up amongst other fans for the Saints style.

Not for the first time this season, a really ordinary Saints team put a lot of points past the opposition without getting out of second gear.

The standard of the league as a spectacle has never been lower. It's slow, ponderous and more or less every try is a flop over. I'm generally an optimist about the state of RL but we are in big trouble if we don't take steps to make the game entertaining again. I was counting down the minutes til I could get out of that game last night so God knows what the casual fans/newcomers would think.

Sorry but it's been 30+ years since we won a tournement against Oz. There have been a mix of styles and numbers of teams in the league in that time.

A reduction of SL teams IMHO is very short term and will lead to no increase in the standard of player. It will simply redistribute the current standard of player through a narrower selection of clubs.

But please someone volunteer to exit Saints from the league and I will take this arguement seriously. It's a money grab exersize plain and simple. Same as any walk of life where there are limited resources some members of society will resort to theiving to take more than the share they are entitled to. The big teams are now seeing that they can't buy up all the talent, eg in years gone by we would never have had Castleford competing with Saints to keep Edmondson. The bigger teams don't like this as they are having to make better recruitment choices rather than just having the natural advantage of more spending power.

The natural result of less in the competition will be less teams producing players to play in the competition. The quota system has only been refitted in the last 5 years and it's now impacting. But even now we still have players under the old system as Manu shows they will not be cleared out of the system for sometime yet.

In 2007 we had 12 teams, we did not beat the Austrailians and we still managed to nil Hull KR 40- 0. Beat Huddersfield 54 - 4. London 44- 6. A reduction in teams did not stop oned sided battles because they are part of sport when one team turns up underdone and the other team is ready for a battle royale.

That same team we hammered mid season, where good enough to beat us earlier on in the year, just as in 2007 London beat us earlier on in the league 14- 6.

Increasing the quality of the competition cannot be done with a quick fix, as you are talking about a turnover of 420 players. In 5 years we have not yet cleared out all quota players, it's taken 10 years of the cap and not every club is at full spend yet. So when you start seeing those time scales you will see how long it will take to increase standards across the board of homegrown talent, rather than clubs using the old method of short term fixes to nip abroad and drag anyone in under what ever loop hole they could find. As we saw the nipping abroad may have filled holes in your club side but did nothing for team GB or England in the last 30 years.

I would also say the team GB(england) struggles as it lags behind the domestic competition. A good example of this is Leeds having so many in the exiles match coming up where as Warrington have so few. Yes Leeds where champions last year but they did finish 5th. They had lost twice as many games as the league leaders over the course of the season.

I think the playoffs are great in terms of spinning out money and interest for other clubs, but as a measure of a team it is a poor measure. It requires 3 to 4 games as opposed to a whole season. Even the Aussies don't use the playoffs to pick their side. The make their picks based on season form, to pick for SOO, which then narrows down the national side.

The rfl should do a investigation to see why the standard had dropped, what's the reasons and why we can't compete with the Aussies.

The are many aspects to look at, like the number of teams in super league, the salary cap, the license system, problems at grass roots(even schools), the overseas reduction in quota players, losing players to NRL and union, no promotion or relegation.

All the above could be the problem or may e we just ain't good enough, it could be just that simple.

Maybe its more deep rooted, in the 4 big sports, England or GB have only ever won 1 of each of the world cups and in cricket they've not even done that.

I'd say we are not good enough. But turning around a national game takes planning and the stamina to follow it through. We are not a million miles away but we would require luck to be in our favour to win and the thing with luck is that over the course of a competition it tends to run out.

In terms of dropping standards though I don't follow the arguement.

Have standards dropped at Warrington, Huddersfield, Hull KR, Wigan, Catalan over the last 5 years??

They have dropped at Saints, Bradford, Leeds .

For me the problem is with the bottom 5. Those teams have struggled to get any consistent period in the top 8. Wakey did it for a few years, but then went bust, London are a major disappointment. Widnes are new so are excused. Salford are progressing but this is their 4th year of a licence so it is taking some time and they are yet to worry the top 8.

People would suggest cutting them but I don't think that's the solution. Those teams fans would probably argue that they are making progress, or that they have only recently come out of admin. I would say these teams are where they are as they have long term issues that no one has the longer term solutions for. That would be low attendances, low youth development, etc.

I think cutting them out would not improve us nationally though, it would just reduce oppertunities for the odd one or 2 in those teams that can make it at a higher level.

Solutions???

Well personally I think some of these long term will not make it, London for example, how can they run £1.6 million cap on 2k fans at £30 a throw over 13 matches, that's fan revenue of less than a million. Surely there on the road matches demonstrate that there is more interest elsewhere and this should be thought of when giving out franchises. Where is the supporter base, not just a business with an interest in being called a SL club.

There are 60,000 people who play RL regularly in this country as opposed to 250,000 in Aus apparently. And any talented youngsters in Aus that do come through are much more likely to plump for a career in RL than any other sport given the big money they can get there and lack of competition from football. No athletically talented teenager with the choice of signing for a SL club or a pro football club in this country will ever likely choose the RL career path again given the frighteningly disproportionate skewing in profile and wages between the 2 sports there's been in the last 15/20 years. British RL simply doesn't have the talent pools the Ossies have, and has way too much competition for what talent there is from other sports. There just simply is no realistic hope we can ever match the Aussies on any kind of consistent basis unless the sport gets a lot bigger profile in this country, and there has been no trace of that ever happening even with Sky's money, the various disastrous expansion clubs and national TV exposure.

I just don't think there's a realistic solution - British RL just needs to baton down the hatches and cut it's cloth accordingly. There's no point in living in a fantasy land where we'll ever have a dozen competitive clubs spread 'round the country with squads packed full of class players that can take on and beat the Australians with stands packed full of fans. It ain't ever going to happen. We're in a league where top clubs have to now rely on the likes of Shenton, Flannery and Matty Smith as key first choice players and where half of the first choice GB squad would do well to sign a reserve contract in the NRL. Sad but true.

yet england to me has never looked stronger :S. i am so glad your not anything to do with the rfl.

If you concentrate the resources into a smaller pool then it stands to reason that the competition will improve because there will be greater competition at each of these clubs (an average on four extra players competing for squad places at each club) which leads to increased intensity and therefore a stronger competition.