How can England catch up

Quote: SmokeyTA "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.'"

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.