There needs to be a 'root and branch' shake up at Red Hall and no more jobs for the boys. When you have people like BJ Mather as Head of Player Development and the woefully inept Dave Rotheram as National Player Development Manager then you get what you deserve.

Obviously this would only work if the top teams kept hold of their academy players, as they never seem to come to much when they've been moved on.

It's about time we had a proper way for young internationals to get used to
Paying international rugby.

Maybe a u19's playing in the European competition, and touring every few years.

Its about all the clubs in SL putting the resources in to develop the next generation of young talent.

Most professional RL clubs pay lip service to developing juniors.

I think St.Helens are an example of a club doing something right on the junior front. For a small town Saints develop a lot of high calibre youngsters.

You would expect that other RL clubs with far larger catchment areas would have far more talent at their disposal. Yet strangely they dont.

The players are out there, they just need to be identified from a young age, then developed to their potential.

I agree entirely.

I'd say only Wigan, St.helens, Warrington, Leeds and Huddersfield are up to a high enough standard.


Awaits massive backlash

What can England do to catch up?
Maybe the question should be is it possible to catch up? Remember that RL is more of a majority sport in the southern hemisphere. Whilst our kids are out pretending to be Wayne Rooney in their free time, Aussie kids are trying to emulate Billy Slater or Lockyer (or some RU player or cricketer!). The vast majority of kids in England, outside the very small minority heartland, have no interest in playing RL. It's a minority sport in our country! It's a fact that successful international teams are developed when the sport they are playing is a national game, so Americans produce the best basket-ball and baseball players, European and south american countries produce the best footballers, and Australia produce the best cricketers and rugby players. Yes, there may be occasional exceptions as sport goes through peaks and troughs, but this is the exception and not the rule.
Next, we cannot hope to compete with such an inept coach. Steve McNamara was a failure at club level. If we are happy to let a coach with absolutely no experience of success coach the national team, why on earth would we expect any different?
And finally, put simply, our players are not as good as the Australians or New Zealanders. Australia beat us comfortably without the services of Inglis, Hayne, Falou or Thurston in the backs. We just have to accept that many of our players are nowhere near the level of their opposition.

So does anyone think the RFL will actually do anything? do they here the fans complaints and fears? If they do, do they jsut turn a blind eye and pretend that everything is rosey.

The short term solution is to send more english young players and players in general to the NRL. Though i'd much rather SL kept the top players and worked on becoming a great comp instead of a mediocre one with occasional flashes of brilliance. The RFL should hurry along the culling of foreign player numbers. Not to 0 but to something like 3.

Nothing wrong with top quality aussies or NZers but SL clubs bring over far to many poor players who are just looking for a run around.

My opinion, nothing is wrong with the forward's they can match it with us and the kiwis any day of the week. It's the backs more specificly the centres and wingers. They need to set up an academy to teach them how to defend

Someone else on this forum pointed out recently that including SOO, the Aussies play about 7 representative games a season.

We play...3.

Until we can get competative games from Wales and France, we need another layer above SL for rep games, and that natural model is the County of Origin.

It might be parochial and tied to our northern routes, but if it helps us beat the Aussies, who cares?

Like the licensing system is showing fruit, like the salary cap is showing fruit this too isnt an instant fix and needs a couple of seasons to bed in.

RL in this country has been discarding failed plans because the didnt produce instant results since 1982 and we havent got close to winning yet. What we need is to settle on a BIG plan and stick to it.

The team selected this time was young and untried, now they are tried and tested and whilst having come up short know what its like for next time, know whats needed of them.

the Other nationalities team will provide that step up that france and wales are'nt capable of at the moment...

I dont think it will, I think it will be a one sided farce and the fundamental problem remains. England will be playing against Super League players at a Super League intensity, it will not be a step up at all. A other nationalities team would be no better than the New Zealand team containing only English based players that England demolished a few years ago.

This aside, what is in it for the other nationalties players? They are hardly going to be paid loads for the game either to make it worthwhile and potential players may not even want to play in it and risk injury for no real beneift to them. Would clubs even release players in the middle of the season for what isnt an international side? If they did get players to play will they really put their bodies on the line and give 100% in a meaningless match? If players couldnt take Lancashire v Yorkshire matches seriously they certainly wont take this seriously.

If players didnt take Lancs v Yorks games seriously, its because they new the GB/England selectors paid them no attention.

SOO is taken so seriously because the players know its the benchmark for the National side. If the RFL can simply engender the same culture of the best players get picked for the County sides, and the best players from the county sides get picked for England (or Wales, Scotland etc) then the players will take it seriously.

But then we are back to the age old problem of the clubs themselves, being too short sighted to realise that whats good for the game is good for them, rather than the other way round.

If you could persuade the players to give a rats ass about it and the incumbent international coach to consider it as a Test trial you might have a point.

Sticking it on a Wednesday night between two club rounds as done in the past will only have the same disappointing impact unfortunately.

I like Dave Woods's suggestion on the BBC website about arranging for a dozen elite young players every year to go spend time with NRL clubs as a kind of "finishing school", with the RFL subsidising their salaries to avoid cap implications for the clubs taking them on.

Exposure to what is clearly a more professional, intense environment in Australia as compared to the reserve/academy competitions in the UK can only be beneficial to their development.

I completely agree.

And that implies that the problem is one that needs fixing from the top to the bottom, root and branch if you will.

But yes, they need to be actually used as test selection games and played over a weekend without a league fixture

Agree wholeheartedly with that - the Other Nationalities idea will not produce the series of INTENSE matches we need mid-season to produce good Test footballers. And we need to be selfish about this - the point of mid-season rep games is for OUR players to go in to camp, not NRL rejects.
I still think an England v the Rest (Saxons v Celts) 3 match series is the way forward. Performance in this series should be used to select a GREAT BRITAIN squad to take on Four Nations and tours, leaving the Home Nations to have end of season tournaments or tours and play every four years in the World Cup. And if crowds are low initially - DON'T GIVE UP! Don't forget a lot of people thought Origin would never work.
Fundamentally when our players are put in the high pressure Test arena they crumble - look at all the soft spilt ball in the Four Nations this year.
Most if not all NRL games have to be played with a high level of intensity. This is certainly not the case in Super League (and I should know, I'm a Quins season ticket holder!) Going from 12 to 14 teams was a big mistake in this regard - we should be down to 10 and increasing the professionalism of the Championship rather than stretching Super League beyond its means and starving good Championship clubs of money and players.