Ashton Sims had the best game I've ever seen from him against NZ. I put him in for that game alone.
Tevita Pangai is looking good, but I still can't forgive him for walking out on Newcastle as a 16 year old.
Jake Saifiti is only doing short minutes because of his compartment syndrome I think. If he ever gets over that he'll be as good as his twin brother, but just now Dan can do 60 minutes a game and Jake can only do 40.

Rhyse Martin is the breakout player of the cup I think. He's been knocking around the lower grades for years and I always thought he must have played a fair bit of firstgrade, but he's yet to debut. This year he made the NSW cup team of the week 9 times and the NSW cup team of the year, so he must be close to making the top grade soon.

That'd be great, then we wouldn't have to put up with this sub standard sludge fest

Have you got a Sheila you whine at as much?

No chance would be my guess reading these posts from someone that obviously can't their TV remote, or the off button, but, can find their way on here.

You can stick to playing with yourselves!

Bonza

I think quite a few SL players have shown up well and shown you don't need to play NRL to perform at this level. England's SL players in McGillvary, Roby, Watkins and Hall have been our best performers and most our NRL guys not exactly wowed with the exception of Widdop who is going well at FB. Also from my club Leeds Singleton and Mullally did well along with a few other SL players in their pack.

Out of curiosity what is the amount of distance the Australian team have travelled so far compared to England?
I get the impression that the England team have travelled a lot further for their games.

9,000 miles to Perth for the warm up game.....2,200 miles to Melbourne for the opener, 600 miles to Sydney then 2,500 miles back to Perth, then 2,200 miles back to Melbourne and now 1,650 miles to Auckland and if they win then 1,400 miles over to Brisbane. 19,550 miles to get to the final or 30,000 miles for the round trip.
The Okers had Melbourne Canberra Sydney Darwin and Now Brisbane.......5,200 miles all in as opposed to England's 8,400 internally for WC games......if both teams were to make the final....the extra 21,500 English Miles were getting to the country and home again....

Its not Aussies, it is either NRL fans unfounded apathy to internationals, or the Aussie RL's embarrassing organisation and promotion of the tournament.

By comparison the 'International Rules' series that took place over the past couple of weeks got bigger attendance's in both tests than in any RLWC game so far. 'International Rules' being a sport created solely for a couple of matches a year between the best AFL and Gaelic football players. And the games were not even played in the AFL heartland of Victoria.

Clearly at least part of the problem here is promotion and marketing, I was aware of the series despite not knowing the rules to either sport and living on the other side of the world to where it was played.

thanks

Aussies did 1,200 miles in 2013.......England did 700.....so host nation does about 40% fewer miles in either case...

It's all about getting tourists to travel and spend money.
Tourist authorities will make a decent bid to host a game if they think it will fill a few thousand hotel rooms, so that is where we are at.
If you just wanted bums on seats you'd hold the whole thing in Sydney, Auckland and Port Moresby.

Really?I doubt anyone from Tonga traveled to Christchurch...or Lebanon for that matter....do you reckon their was a single Samoan tourist in Darwin? How many French fans have travelled....have the Irish Hordes taken over Port Moresby?.....Was Perth "awash" with Euro tourists for the double header there?
How many English travelers will be in Auckland?

We are not a "wealthy" sport and therefore if a city bids for and wins a RLWC game, the chances are it'll be a break even exercise at best.....god knows how much Cairns bid for their 2 events and 3 games but I doubt they got their money back!

This comp has been badly marketed.......that's why it's been poorly attended!

Maybe you should point all that out to the people who paid good money to get the games.
They'll think you are an idiot, but you must be used to that I imagine.

The comment was about why cities pitched for this business.....but you reply with Insults eh........only really worth the cash if they're accurate and not based on theory or opinion.

281,352 attendees leaving 245,000 EMPTY SEATS.........so about 56% capacity thus far. I'd say that the 13,524 people who paid to watch 3 games in Cairns really enjoyed themselves........but there were still 22,476 unsold tickets at those two events 37.5% capacity.
Townsville.....25% capacity with 37,000 unsold seats.......Canberra 32% and 50,000 unsold seats including 12k for an Australian Test match.....how about some more "idiot" facts eh....wellington 23,000 unsold seats for Quarter Final involving the HOME NATION.....
There has been little if any promotion of this RLWC on the ground....we've already had 7 more games than 208 and still have 12k fewer fans......

and I repeat, how many of those fans who have attended (including myself to multiple games) have contributed a brass farthing to those host cities? The organisers don't care, they've been paid, but let's see who's keen to bid in the UK when we've got 4 and 5k gates to "sell".