Too much money and time spent on making already decent players gell rather than develop their own players. Like has already been said there is just a merry-go-round of average British players combined with over the hill Aussies or not quite good enough for the NRL overseas players and our resources are aimed primarily on making all these gell in the first team and very little is put into making sure lots of kids take up the sport and are developed properly. Next time the franchises are up, I'd want to see what the Super League clubs do at local junior sides, schools etc... as part of the points system.

Ok Mr Picky.

There have obviously been a number of times we have beat the Aussies in a test match, but when it comes to winning a series, we have won jack.

It was so long ago that ‘Stevo’ was in the team FFS, and you were probably a twinkle in your Granny’s eye

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Brilliant and accurate assessment.

This was always inevitable (and predicted) when the number of clubs in SL was increased. More clubs chasing the same number of top class players has only one result. Add in that more clubs are paying the full cap than previously and it`s bound to happen.

What`s actually more important is our attitude to it. In some ways it`s a positive; as a competition SL is fgenerally more open now that it has ever been. Though from an international perspective we are no longer having games featuring vast arrays of international players (Saints and Leeds excepted) so England aren`t getting the same intensity as previously when the top players were more concentrated.

Walters had an impossible job following Potter, made even more difficult by the fact they had no pre-season games amongst many other distractions. Now they have settled in, and the weather gets hot in France they will go well and will defo be in the play offs.

Not quite. Having the best players spread more evenly through the competition means that each such player has to work harder to achieve. It's much harder to look "good" in a team that's not so good.

I think its quite natural that in the early years of the salary cap (combined with stricter quota rules), the standard of the traditionally higher placed clubs would drop.

Instead of being able to sign up the best players, the focus is now on the coaches to train up the more modest youngsters and implement more effective playing strategies. I expect the standard to start creeping up over time.

Agree fully.

The early stages are going to see a lower standard. As clubs start to improve coaching and using their youngsters more and more due to no threat of relegation the standard should improve. Its a long term project IMO.

The standard of coaching is appalling at most SL teams and this is holding players and teams back.

Warrington have realised too late that appointing an explayer with little/no coaching experience isnt going to do you favours, but for me their season has already been wrecked.

Hudersfield and Hull KR have shown that with a decent coach, run of the mill players can improve their basic skills dramatically and therefore become a significant threat.

Saying that i think a lot of the current blowouts are down to 3 games in 8 days for teams.

Wigan fans always cry wolf at the salary cap
Hull fans are saying the competition is weaker when in reality its them who are weaker, due to having a caoch in charge who is out of his depth.

and don't forget the players!!!

They have a responsiblity as well.

I agree with wellsy the standard has dropped and significantly. 4/5 years ago we had 3-4 clubs challenging for the title, and another 1-2 who could launch a bid for it, that was nearly half the league, now we have two who are comfortably better which is apparently the league being "more competitive"

Knowing this The only argument you could make against this being evidence of the dumbing down of the league would be if those two clubs were comfortably better than they were 5 years ago, as a leeds fan, who has just seen his team crowned back to back champions, I would still argue we aren't as good as we were 5 years ago

The recent Leeds hudds game was 2nd v 4th and bar a top
Quality 15mins around half time for Leeds, the fundementals from both sides were very poor.

This is an obvious effect of an sc designed purely to hold back the top clubs, that is all it was meant to do and all It can do, stop the top teams improving past a certain level leading to a levelling down of the league until we have a league full of mediocre clubs

And anybody thinking this sc will bring through rafts of quality new young British players is simply deluding themselves, we have Many many many more overseas players than we had pre-cap and we aren't seeing clubs bring through lots of quality youngsters, and certainly not lots more than previously

It's time for a complete rethink on the cap

The drop in standards at Wigan, Bradford, Hull and Warrington in the last 3-4 years has been very alarming, with no real threat coming from elsewhere. Catalans had their brief moment in the sun reaching Wembley and having a decent tilt last year, but realistically they were never going to win SL last season. HKR and Huddersfield have been hyped up a little bit so far this year, but can you realistically see them winning either trophy?

Saints and Leeds are the benchmark and have developed good standards in SL in the last 3 years, but until the competition improves across the board, even they will be significantly weaker than their NRL counterparts. Saints and Leeds have both had good coaches (Australian/Kiwi) and players over the last 3-4 years which I think is very significant.