How does the salary cap here or down under explain the total lack of WC half backs or general paucity of quality backs in this country?

Good question, but this has been an issue for a long, long time over here. Can surely only be down to the quality of coaching, or lack of.

Quite simple, too many ex forwards as coaches.

Two bright spots: Catalans retaining second place on the ladder, despite injuries and suspensions, and in the Championship London Broncos are definitely top two.

Third Bright Spot: in League One Toulouse appear headed for top 2 position, despite their draw with wicked Rochdale.

Look to the junior game to see the antecedent to that problem - community teams, coached to win by angry Dads with a level 2 coaching badge that they earned through a half day course; pass it to the big lad, stick the little ones on the wing and take to Twitter to laud the achievements of your young charges.

If only it was that simple.

I fully agree with you.

I guess many on here have played amateur Rugby as a young lad and seen It was always the biggest strongest most developed lad put at 6 or 13 or in a role where the ball handler should be. Its generally all about winning at that level and not enough focus on the goal of developing the right lads in their correct roles.

My eldest lad was very lightweight as a seven and eight year old but could pass a lot better than any other kid in his team and more accurately than most of the coaches. He would regularly, and without prompting from his coach, deliberately pass the ball over the head or behind the coaches chosen first receiver (the big lad) straight into the hands of a better placed runner further wide. He gave up playing as his name was never called to get a run with the ball and was invariably substituted as soon as he missed a tackle hence he rarely played for more than five minutes in a game.

Just to add, he's nineteen now and whilst not a big lad he's a solid 5'10" of bone and muscle. Not for one second suggesting that he could/would have made it if he'd continued to play, but I'm sure there are plenty like him out there who could have but were put off and allowed to slip through the net by 'angry dads' who wanted to win at any cost.

Actually think we could see a new winner thus year and because of the unpredictablilty of things this year still time for most teams to get in the 8 and stand a chance, points are being spread out more. Going to be a hell of a fight for 6-8 if the Giants and Rhinos can put a run together.

A not unfamiliar story; and the sad thing is, the 'big lad' is often just an early developer who soon becomes the average lad when his peers catch up - and he's learnt nothing from several years in the junior game of just running over smaller kids.

I'm not sure what the answer is - there's a whole load of excellent voluntary involvement in jr rugby without which, there would be no community game; but coaching is just too important to be left to poorly qualified volunteers.

Didn't Andrew Johns a few years ago touch on this and say that introducing a weight category rather than age category might help matters?