can i just say though........it's not about quantity...it's quality that matters


NZ has far less playing numbers than australia & england........has'nt stopped them becoming 4nations & world champions...


#justsayin

This argument keeps coming up about playing numbers and how England/GB needs to have greater number of players to compete. You have more than enough players to beat Australia consistently. Look at the number of fully professional clubs you have (NZ has just 1), most have academies and SL will soon have the benefit of the world class Widnes academy.

The real problem is the poor standard of coaching. Watch any SL game you will see countless instances of players lack of confidence in their own ability to execute basic skills.

But most coaches in SL are.........


Well done GB students. Absolutely love it.

Well, there's only five unis that play in the Brisbane comp (UQ, QUT, Griffith, USQ and maybe ACU) and only five in the first grade comp in Sydney. There is a second grade comp in NSW that has a few extra unis in it. But overall there would be little more than 20 university teams in all of Australia that play regular competition. A couple of regional unis get a game or two here and there. My uni only has union teams, although they used to have inter-college league tournaments within the uni and have entered sevens teams in the Uni Games. There have been 3 players that I know of that have played for Australia over the last 10 or 11 years but to do so they have to go and combine with players from other unis at the Qld trials. The population over there means there are just a heap more unis and they are all close enough that they can play against each other regularly. Here there are less unis and they are further apart so they just don't play. For example, there would be almost no way of getting universities in expansion areas like Melbourne or Perth to start playing unless there was some local competition for them. But over there unis in expansion areas like Oxford and Cambridge don't have to go that far to get a game.

Edited for Accuracy

Are there people in Uni in Oz who have played representative football? ie. Played Harold Matts, SG Ball in NSW, or Meninga and Connell Cups in QLD and even some who would have played Jersey Flegg or the now called Toyota Cup U20s?

this is off the AURL site

Thanks for that spud. So that means people from TAFE can play. So Australian players qualify by going to the equivalent of College or POLYs (if they still exist) back in UK.


TAFE NSW has over 130 metropolitan and regional campuses in NSW alone according to their website.

whats TAFE??

that was 40 years ago though




going off the AURL eligibility thing i posted earlier.....a TAFE (i know what they are now)does'nt have to have a team.....any RL player enrolled in a TAFE,college or uni is eligible for the AURL team....


so i guess any kid who is on the books at a NRL team and is enrolled at a TAFE doing a part time bricklaying course....he can play for the AURL team

"Can".

Any person enrolled in tertiary education in the UK can play too. But they don't.

If the AURL team recruited every NRL contracted player that is currently also a uni student the Australian Universities team would be a fully professional outfit. But they don't. You have to play for your uni to play for Australia.

A bunch of UK park players beat a bunch of Australian park players...

ECT is correct, tertiary rugby league in Australia is close to non existent. When I was at uni the only league we played was 7's at the university games, however we ended up linking up with one of the local club sides to give the university club a pathway for players who weren't originally from the region.

However, well done GB!

can't you read?


you only have to be ENROLLED and currently proceeding in a course of study at a university, TAFE, tertiary institution or recognised college

nothing about having to play for your uni team....


and if the AURL are'nt picking their best team possible thats their fault and they deserve to have gotten their backsides handed to them

Of course I'm correct. But apparently a bunch of poms who know nothing of the game here reckon they know better. It's just ignorance and it's pretty much expected from the usual suspects.