Hmm really, the figures I read go totally against that. I have just emailed barla and nzrl for their official figures of juniors playing the game. As soon as hear or if I hear back from them I post the info.

It's the quality of players, the quality of coaching and more importantly the intensity of the games, even at Junior level.
The Junior Kiwis have just beaten the Aussies, let's see how we go on in the next two weeks v the Aussie U18's.

At the risk of appearing to be moaning (again) about our academy systems, they are not preparing our better young players for the first team, and those are the kids (and coaches) IMO that would benefit more from a year or two's scholarship out in Australia.

However to do that we would need the RFL, ALL the clubs, and the Aussie ARL to buy into it and help to fund it.

I wouldn't bet my house on it happening though.

Indeed, why would the Aussies care about training our youngsters up for no benefit to them? That's why it's a none starter of an idea.

Sending players over to play in the NRL is a short term fix to improving the England squad (and I mean short term as in 5 years or so). The long term solution is improving our coaching, especially youth coaching. That is were the majority of failure is. Good youth coaches produce players with better skills who turn into better players. Doing that means we don't have to send our players over to the NRL for 4 years to learn how to play the game at 24, and also means we don't weaken our own game by losing all the better players to a rival competition.

So should the RFL fund a couple of young promising coaches to go and do a placement at an NRL club each year?

Thats a very simple but excellent idea.

Or clubs over hear making links with a club down under and candidates being sent for work placement and vice versa.

Again, something I've been banging on about for years, but as Billinge_Lump says it would need the buy in from the Aussie Clubs, which if they were really bothered about International RL should be a no brainer.
And therein lies the problem.

Sorry for the sermon, but it really does wind me up.

I would even make clubs give up £100K (example) of their t.v. money to MAKE it happen.

Leeds are on with it with the bulldogs, but I reman skeptical(SGU for life) as the souths link up was nothing more than PR

I still feel the junior leagues need to switch to summer! Look at the weather outside! What incentive is there for talented lads to go training in that, you cannot improve core skills and more importantly its just not enjoyable, plus most matches will be called off for the next 2 months, so youngsters get out of the habit and never return to the game.
A switch to summer would hopefully see an increase in the number of kids actually playing rugby league and the smaller more skillful players will shine rather than the giant kid with no core skills who nobody can tackle

You seem to forget who is running our game.This post makes sense,the ideas should be adopted,but as i say ,look who our administrators are,they couldn't organise the preverbial in a brewery

While a fine point, it does have its drawbacks.

Speaking as someone who plays a summer sport, we can have any number from our 40-50 strong squad out at any time. Admittedly, we only play ten games a season, so it is easy to plan around our matches, and our players are dedicated enough to hold out for the fixture list to do so, you cannot do this so much with young families.

The stability of the league by doing this would be thrown up.

Of course, this would hopefully be offset by more involvement.

ski,i think the benefits of summer rugby for the amateur game far outweigh the pitfalls.training in warm weather,developing skills,hopefully poaching a few ru players.if its good enough for the pro's,its good enough for us all

I agree entirely, and am not belittling or arguing against the suggestion, more playing the devil's advocate on the basis of my personal experience.

It would be a far better idea than sending players over. Didn't Mike Rush do something along those lines early in his career?

.........................and Burgess when he played for England. Whilst his tackling and attitude were fine, his ball handing has gone backwards since SL - he was a one man knockonathon!
personally thought Robes, Benny and Jammer showed better than him and Ellis (or perhaps not as fit?)