You know Ive been hearing this rhetoric for years now , first it was bring loads of ozzie players over and our lads will improve to their standards, then it was bring over loads of ozzie coaches and you guessed it we will improve to their standards, and why not put them in charge of the national side !! now its dumb down our game so as to improve to their standards . And do you know what !! its a load of pure unadulterated bo**ocks, if you want to compete at international level there's only one way and that's to ban all overseas players allowing our own young talent to develop, easy and yet we persist in this ozzie clap trap.

Christ, I never knew Nick Griffin was a Saints' fan...

hell Ski your intellectual imput is mindblowing like my old da used to say "IF THA'S NOWT TO SAY LAD SAY NOWT.

and that's what the rfl are attempting with the reduction in quota, but we have to use the same interpretation of the rules if we are to stand a chance.

Australia is an outdoor nation they have the weather for outdoor pursuits, while kids here are smoking and drinking at 12 years old trying to look " COOL" ! over there they are playing sports of all kinds that's why they are so good, they are bigger, stronger, faster, and better coached than us, FACT ! and we will never catch up, and stopping the likes of Cunningham, and Roby and other simalar type players doing what they do best wont make a scrap of difference believe me Ive seen it all before.

England and Great Britain as a nation have been the same for a thousand years, but we still keep winning against the odds, and our rugby league team can as well.

It's not so much the SC that's having a big effect it's the taxman clamping down on overseas payments.

This has basically reducing the amount of available salary to pay the players - for the teams that have used this payment method in the past of course!

Some might say that using offshore accounts wasn't 'in the spirit of the salary cap' , but it is certainly making the salary cap 'more equal' now - which is what the point of it was all along.

I'm sure you can have points deducted for that.

Just one of the benefits of having a banker for a chairman

I don't think so - that would be ridiculous!!

Why would it? Finding a loophole could be argued to be against the spirit of the cap surely.

I think he was extracting the michael.

this isnt the aussie interpretation of the rules though, there would be a mass of penalties in all oour games this year because of what the refs are allowing to go on

the slowing down in Aus comes from wrestle techniques to hold the person up in the tackle before putting them down and when they do go down they are put on their backs with plenty in the tackle,

this is fine and in the rules and it is great if our players learn some of these things,

If our players go into the 4 nations thinking that laying on and not getting back the ten will acheive the same thing, we will see us lose by plenty and give away ridiculous amounts of penalties.

If we really wanted to defeat the Aussies then we should have allowed the game to evolve, when a team becomes really strong at one aspect of the game, the rest become better at exploiting it themselves and defending against it, then another team becomes better at a different area of the game before the rest become better at it themselves and better at defending it, and the cycle repeats and repeats, if we want to beat australia we need to be not only getting better at what they do (which this interpretation isnt doing, just pretending to) but come up with something new, its certainly not taking the PTB back 10years to a mess because some coaches arent good enough to counter what saints have been good at!

and all this game being dominated by scoots from the PTB is a myth anyway, Leeds have been the most successful team in the past 5 years (by GF wins anyway, which is what SL is about) and we have had a fairly slow hooker in diskin for all those 5 years, his onlly colleagues have been Millard (hardly Usain Bolt) and Danny Buderus (who was always more a passer organiser than a runner)

Saints were never a one trick team, and that trick was never that prevelant in the game, what it demanded however was good and organised defense, something sorely lacking in this country and so we have had to go backwards to cover for those faillings

You mean finding a loophole such as a tax 'avoidance' loophole which means that players can take home more of their salary and pay less to the taxman, whilst the club can offer more take home pay to their players and still keep under the salary cap type of loophole?

A loophole that the IR also is investigating to check whether the use of such 'aviodance' schemes have been 'against the spirit of the inland revenue tax rules'

Yeah - I guess you're right, it probably is against the spirit of the cap isn't it...........