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.

Well, where do we start...

The RFL have to start taking the international scene more seriously
More players need to go out to Oz and learn from the best
Sack Steve Mac and replace him with a decent f'in coach and backroom staff who can pick a decent squad. The guy got released/fired by Bradford yet we give him the England job? Absolute genius move.
Reduce the overseas quota to 3 so only the very best imports come over

This one's a bit drastic but how about...
Scrap the 4 nations and go back to Great Britain with an Ashes test series every 4 years and a Kiwi series every two. Switching to an England team has basically crippled our chances of winning any international competitions because the strength in depth simply isn't there...

Fund jnr RL to the tune of 20million pounds a year, double the number of jnrs playing RL in England, increase revenue at SL clubs to 8million pounds. Then we would be where Australia are at today. Your living in cloud cuckoo land. RL in Australia has become massive, the game in England is simply not big enough to keep pace. In fact given the disaprity in money in the two leagues it is amazing we are anywhere near them.

but it will still be the same 17 englishmen whether we're england or GB

Hmmm... Some good points there.

This isnt a criticism of St's they do a relatively good job.

But thats all it is, relatively good, the fact that Saints, Leeds, Wigan and Hull have the best academies] doesnt mean they are 'good' academies. We have clubs who simply pay lip service to junior development, clubs with very strong amateur areas who bring through few youngsters, and those that do rarely fulfil their potential, ill come back to this in a short while.

The argument about needing a comparable series to origin is nonsense, the Aussies arent better because they play 3 origin games a year. It also forgets that the Kiwis have nothing like it and they do alright.

We have four problems to overcome,

firstly, Coaching. we dont have coaches of the same quality, we need to make them, we need to innovating not playing catch up. Also just the effort we put into coaching the basics. It is criminal that Warrington couldnt coach Kevin Penny how to catch. There is debate on the leeds board about whether Kallum Watkins will 'make it' there shouldnt be, he has all the natural attributes to make a world class player, it should be a given we can coach him defensive position and decision making.

secondly Sports science, the game barely touches the surface of player preparation and athletic improvement. Here is an opportunity for us to invest and be at the forefront of an area which will help us close the gap with the players we have right now, we need to be doing this not only at international level but at club level.

thirdly Player pool. It is too small. We need to clubs to be unearthing every potential player possible, looking at every sprinter, every wrestler, weightlifter, basketball player, etc, It is very rare that an athlete can make a career out of these sports, and rarer still that they can make a living out of it in the way they can at RL. We also need more clubs, in more areas, not just at SL level but at NL level and Amateur level because we need more players. Every county level athletics meet should over-flowing with RL scouts. Then we can use our superior Coaching and Sports Science to make them RL players.

lastly mentality. We have got a mental hurdle to overcome before we can win. This should be easy to change, but its something that we shouldnt really have allowed ourselves to develop. I would like to see an under 16's, U18's, and U21's go to Australia every year for a 3 month tour, playing and learning how to beat, and then experiencing beating Australian club and respective national sides. So that when they move up to the full-squad they know what its like to win regularly against Australian players.

We are playing catch up, and we need to stop simply doing a poor impression of Australia and start innovating ourselves and put in place a structure where clubs are not only forced to do the minimum in terms of creating quality RL players, but rewarded for doing so.

You keep hitting on this one Smokey, as if there is a massive pool of top level athletes in these other sports, that aren't playing rugby at all so can't be found.
The guys playing these sports, if they have an aptitude for rugby, are almost certainly playing it.
As an example, of the players we've recently got into pro academies or trials, along with playing rugby, we had players who also did: Hockey, Athletics (200m sprinter) , trampolining, power lifting, and judo.
They were all spotted because of playing rugby, not those other sports. I don't believe there is this pool out there of kids playing other sports and never thinking of rugby, who are going to be superior athletes.

Spot on and this is what I was trying to get at in my opening post. There is so much that the clubs, and the RFL, can do now to narrow the gap. Things like getting rid of qouta players or calling for more representative games only play lip service to the problem and in my opinion will not solve anything in themselves. They do not get rid of the fundamental flaws in the way that the game is run in the country from amateur level to many professional clubs. Expanding our player pool is great but will take time, money and effort and in the meantime I firmly believe that there is an awful lot that can be done to make our existing player poor better.

Our biggest problem is in the factors mentioned by famous above particularly coaching and development work. Reducing the number of overseas players isn't suddenly going to make any of those things better.