War of the Roses?

You fools can you not see? In whatever form it takes (Yorks V Lancs, East v West, Possibles v Probables) we must have another representative tier within the game FOR ENGLAND/GB PLAYERS ONLY. The Exiles game? What nonsense this is. Why are we limiting the exposure of our own players to a representative higher tier in this way? We could have 34-40 of our own players with this exposure every season which would help to prepare them for international football. What do we do-give this exposure to second rate imports over our own. Lets not kid ourselves here. The Exiles was a second rate import team and not one of those players would land an Origin or a Kangaroos/NZ spot over here. It is an embarrasment that we did not hammer this team.

Give 40 of our blokes the chance to fight it our for an international spot over a three game series and you would see real intensity and players develop into international players before your eyes. Why can we not look after our own and add our own signature to the way we play? I'll give you a perfect illustration of why. We have a league full of Australian coaches like Mick Potter who would rather play an appallingly slow, 3rd rate Australian player such as Mark Herbert over a developing, raw local talent like Kyle Briggs because he is apparantly 'better defensively'. Briggs has now been shipped out on loan. We must maximise the limited opportunities we have in our game for players and coaches and remove the likes of Potter and Herbert now! I know all the arguments about visas and grandparent rules so lets further incentivise the clubs to develop origin players financially so it is not worth bringing these people over. We could use this new series as a vehicle to achieve this and it will need some radical thinking around the size of Superleague and it's length to make it fit the calendar. Having lived in Brisbane now for a year and witnessed the stunning origin spectacle, I am now even more convinced that the lack of terrestrial TV exposure and Australian/NZ imports are the major blight on our game and until this is corrected and we start to play the game in our own style, with our own core values we will never be competitive internationally. I could live with never winning another series against Australia in my lifetime as long as we were trying to do it in our own way. We must increase our terrestrial TV exposure, commit to this new series in the long term and save the Challenge Cup. How can we stand and watch this wonderful competition die like this? It's about time we regained some dignity even if it means losing for another 40 years, because the strategy of importing everything Australian clearly does not work.

As the TV deal negotiations are on-going, now is the time to build and commit to this three game series in whatever form it takes and stop penalising our own. The question of whether it should be Yorks V Lancs misses the point completely.