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.

The simple fact of the matter is that there's not enough money in the game to fund resources to the same extent as they do in Australia.

I remember in the 90s when we had a 3 division league, just before SL started. 2nd div had just 8 teams, to build the intensity needed for the step up..


It failed utterly. So the "fewer teams, more intensity" is crap. Look at the SPL. What really happens is two teams walk it by miles, followed by the make weights.


And just to stir it a bit more, the last time we beat the Aussies, we had no P&R and we had just one league that all teams played in.

Does anyone else think that our players freeze on big occasions? I think that the u21 and academy teams would benefit if they played in front of bigger crowds, so maybe it would be good if Englands youngsters played warm ups to big games like Wigan v Saints, Leeds-Bradford, the Hull derby etc.

before everyone throws the baby out with the bathwater.....lets just remember that this was probably our 3rd choice team that we sent down under.......and they only lost by 10 to the world champions and australia could only score 18 legitimate points against us..to our 14point.....

its not all bad imo.....what do we need to do to improve??

1, a 2 game series against the Other nationalities...and have a England 'A' team play france & wales

2, send the whole of the england academy team to the NRL clubs to play in their NYC

3, sack McNamara......taking burgess & graham off after just 20mins while leading 8-6....when they came back on it was 26-8.....erm.....pack ya bags ya clown...

Really?

There were probably four players missing who would have been dead set selections for England's first choice 17 had they been available - Peacock, Morley, Eastmond and maybe Hall.

Hardly a third choice line up.

Hall was available, he just wasnt selected.