That cant be done though can it. Even if it could if the quality of coaching, training etc is all the same then it is hardly going to raise intensity or produce a better standard of competition. It would just mean we have worse players playing in their place and standards would fall. Simply getting rid of imports and nothing else will not help.

Why does it not surprise me you are saying not to reduce the imports.

I am bet that if Wigan had kept hold of players instead of binning them for Jonny Foreigner you'd be agreeing.

Look at Eastwood and Orford. Would homegrown players just run off home if things were not going their way?

Who have we 'binned' since Lindsay and Whelan left?

Wigan now have the some of the best youngsters in the competition, at least five will get starting shirts for England soon

Here we go people blinded by club prejudices. Try getting off your high horse for a second, did I say I wouldnt reduce them? If I had my way I would reduce them to 3. That way you would get top quality imports and get rid of the likes of Phelps and Bailey who dont offer any more than an English player. However with the Kolpak players and the amount of Australian's and Kiwis with British ancestry there will always be ways around it. If its illegal to prevent it then there isnt much you can do about it.

Also I think you will find if imports where banned completely then Wigan would fare far better than other clubs but it would only lower the standard of the competition as a whole and do nothing to further English RL.

The reduction in overseas players will not magically sprout 100's of world class english players. It's a fallacy that overseas players stop the development of the best english player. I would argue that they improve those players bringing a higher level of competition and skill to SL and therefore leading to better players.

I would remove the limitations on overseas players entirely, but to complement that I would have the RFL provide financial incentives to clubs who produce players who go on to play international/representative rugby.

get rid of the french team unless you increase the number to three.as things stand they serve no purpose.

reduce SLE to twelve teams.
reduce the number of antips.
get rid of the salary cap to allow clubs to compete only for the best antips and the best RU players.
a decent transfer to clubs outside SLE to make it worthwhile producing youngsters of the necessary quality for SLE.

I agree with your comments in the first paragraph. There will always be ways round it but once clubs start benefiting it will be easier.

However, how would banning imports do nothing? It would give players from the lower division a chance at Superleague. Lunt for example was playing for Workington when the Giants signed him 2 years ago. Had he not be given that chance would he have turned out for England this morning?

Quality British players are out there but there are few teams prepared to put the effort in. The RFL rule on home trained players has already started to make a difference. Wigan, as a previous poster has said, have 5 lads who will break through soon, this should reduce the requirement for so many foreign accents at Wigan and allow another batch to come through. There are 12 clubs who should be developing at least 5 British youngsters this year (and a few French and Welsh ones!)

Are people seriously suggesting that the NL players are the international players being forced out by imports?

FFS making our competition even worse is not going to improve the exposure to pressure the top 30 or so players we need for internationals. They will just be used to either: playing as the star player in a crap team against generally crap team if the salary cap distributes skill; or just amplifying a top few teams that play against NL standard teams and occasionally against each other for decent intensity.

We need to increase the pool to select from, not just the amount that make it out.

Since 1982 clubs etc., have spouted this and and yet strangely there has been no improvement in the results!!!!!

Why does everyone keep saying we under performed? That players are a lot better than what they showed today?
Are they really any better? Or are the Aussies & NZ actually that much better than us. We can't keep saying players underperformed year in year and and justify archaic coaching techniques based on 1 game every 4 years we pull out of the bag. Michael Maguire went to Wigan this year and brought a new approach to coaching and took the same players and made them champions. This is what we need to do throughout Rugby League. A new modern approach to the game has to be brought in. The Mcnamaras, Mcdermotts and Lowes of this game need to be replaced. The brass at HQ need to be shipped out and the game needs to be looked at properly by people who want to bring the game forward.

I am all for giving younger players a chance and Wigan have benefited from that but it has to be in the right environment. Simply replacing all quota players with young English players is only going to make the standard and intensity of the competition far worse as in many cases they are no where near as good as the players they are replacing. That is why I think 3 is ideal as it seperates the quality import from those that are no better than English players. Getting rid of quota players completely will in my opinion just result in a similar situation that has been seen in the academy where young players are playing at a fairly pathetic standard with only 3 over age players allowed and the standard has fallen through the floor. The younger players still need to play against better players to improve and get them ready for internationals.

The problem you'll always find with any number of imports be it 1 or 3 or 5, is that they always tend to be the players that take up the creative positions in teams. Hookers, Half BAcks etc...... thats where we fall down. Creativity has always been a problem with GB RL. And anyone with any size as a kid automatically gets taught how to play prop. If Greg Inglis had come from Halifax he'd be doing 20 minute spells for James Graham now.....

no matter what we do we will never compete as long as RL is behind many other sports,even if RL become the no.1 sport in britain it would probibly struggle as britain is not well know to developing finely tuned athletes is it?

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.