Woh, hold on a second! Where the did I say all NRL players are better athletes and more skillful? Don't put ing words into my mouth, mate.

I was, quite clearly, speaking in generalities. Not once did I imply or suggest anything to the contrary. And you know it.

Absolutely, I'm not trying to say physicality is the be and end all because I don't think it is. But the problem I think we have is that right now the Aussies and Kiwis have the edge on us mentally and in terms of skill. And most people address this and say we need to get better here.

But I do think a lot of people overlook the importance of raw athleticism. We don't have enough 'gun' athletes. Haynes aerial game has never been superb as he strikes me as quite a heavy kid, but with ball in hand and off the mark he's like a ball of energy. I remember seeing a clip from the NRL Footy show of Hayne training with Usain Bolt and my god for his size he can get into gear in a blink!

This is something that can be easily changed with better training, I think.

The problem I think we're close to having is that while we have a skillfull team they're falling short athletically. I definitely believe it's far more important than people realise. I would be the vast majority of Aussies and Kiwis would wipe our respective opposites in some sort of cross-athletic test to measure speed, power etc

Whether they have better playing numbers or better conditioning and training or even a better combination of the 2 I'm not sure. All I know is every year a couple of kids come into the NRL like Tupou and Hoffman, but I've never seen any fb/s and wingers bred in the SL who are as fast, strong and explosive. The NRL seem to be developing kids who wouldn't look out of place in an NFL team were they raised in that part of the world. We're short on freak athletes I feel. Jason Robinson was probably the last truly outstanding athlete we had.

It read to me like you were making sweeping generalisations.

And why not take it further.

queensland players are for the most part more athletic and skillful than NSW players, and they wont catch up unless Queensland RL collapses...

But I wasn't making a sweeping generalisation, I was making a generalisation - There's a difference. One is a fallacy, one isn't.

And to compare the gap between QLD and NSW to the gap between AUS, NZ and England is, at best, laughable. NSW could go on a 4 year winning streak starting next year, England cannot and will not.

Another reason for the superiority of NZ and Aus may well be their appreciation and love for most sports. Touch football over this is massive, and I've seen many players credit their skills to basketball, both of which are largely absent over here.

Basically you wont accept any argument that isnt "ZOMG the NRL is the BEST!"

To be honest, this statement



You’re not saying some Super League players are less athletic than the NRL players, you have collectively called them ‘Super League players’

If you didn’t mean that SL players are inferior athletes to NRL players, why did you say that SL players are inferior athletes to NRL players?

I'm sorry but you're wrong. I neither said nor implied, at any point in this thread, that every NRL player is superior to every SL player.

What I'm saying - which is quite clear if you'd care to read - is that NRL players are (generally) superior athletes and have superior skills than SL players. My posts aren't complicated or confusing.

I suppose you would also like to me to start - or end - every sentence with 'in my opinion', just on the off chance that some semi-literate members wrongly assume I'm promoting my statements as fact?

Gareth Ellis is a far superior player to Hoffman and was when he was here in this country.

And if you read carefully, you will see that I have said that is far too sweeping a statement

Sure some NRL players are better athletes that Super League players but equally, some SL players are better than NRL players

I can honestly say that watching the NRL Grand Final this morning that the players were not clearly more athletic than the Wigan and Saints players the day before (the player I have mentioned before, George Rose, would be a laughing stock in SL)

28 thousand post later and you still retain the ability to talk .

It would be simpler if, rather than throw a little hissy fit because people didn't guess the qualification to a statement which you didn't qualify if you simply qualify your statements if they require qualification.

To put 'in my opinion' at the end of your statement wouldn't have qualified it in the way you wanted to qualify it. What you needed to say was 'in general......' or 'for the most part...........' in which case you would have used the words you needed to use to express what you were trying to express just on the off-chance our fully literate members couldn't be bothered deciphering your semi-literate nonsense.

I was talking about young Josh Hoffman, the fullback for the Brisbane Broncos. Ellis is indeed a better player than Ryan Hoffman. BUT Ellis, while being a world class player before the NRL, has certainly improved with the Wests Tigers.

smokey i'm so glad i unlocked that post

While I realise I am on hiding to nothing here because you seem to have a very high regard for all things NRL... it is not at all certain that Ellis has improved during his time with Wests – in fact, as an attacking player I think his game has gone backwards in recent years