It would be great if that were the case but youth development costs a lot of money, is a long-term investment and has uncertain and irregular results for the clubs 9-18 in this new structure they simply wont prioritise youth development, where at the very young ages they need the coaching, or when they need blooding in to first grade because of their need for short-term results.

When your income and possibly survival and existence is dependent on where you finish, where are you putting your money, on a 16/17/18 year old who may or may not make it and who probably wont be ready for the regular first grade games for two or three years or a Luke Dyer/Jim Gannon/Michael Korkidas nrl reserve grade or below player?


There is a good chance that we will see the same amount of overseas players, just worse ones.

So, when the NRL announce they'll be spending $11 million to bring the NSW and Queensland Cups under the NRL banner to create a secon tier national competition they are lying?

After this season i see the 2 relegated teams stuck in the championship indefinately until the rules are tweaked in some form. The better trained full time SL players will be too strong for the championship part timers who are there because they arent good enough for SL or not developed enough. When the SL clubs realise this you'd like to think they'd continue with developing their youth but i suspect it will only be the top clubs who always finish in the top 8 who will have the nerve to do so.

Id also say, it isn’t necessary for us to see the NRL and its success as a threat, we should see it as an opportunity.

He said a "national" second tier comp. despite your self importance the last time I looked neither the nsw cup or the Intrust cup were national competitions nor are they full time professional leagues.

There's no real incentive for clubs to produce youth player. That's the start and end of it.

Youth development is expensive with no guarantees of success. Given the lack of money in the game, it's more prudent for clubs to look at kolpaks and the like rather than develop a young lad who then gets pinched by a bigger club for peanuts

If they were to have a second national competition surely it would have to be full time at some point?

its too expensive. No sport in Australia has managed to deliver a FT national second tier competition. RU wasted a sehd load of money trying it. RL will not be the first. The NRL has done a good thing investing more in the two main State leagues and we will see teams from other cities possibly joining them comps but they will reamain PT with FT NRL blow ins to the feeder clubs. Reality is most NRL clubs can not afford to run reserve grade sides so they use teams in these two comps that have access to pokie funding. Storm despite receiving over $4.2million more a year still do not run a Melbourne reserve grade side.

The end of season GF between the two comps is a positive step forward.

I don't see this having any negative impact on the game in the UK.

No, I dont think so.

Queensland and nsw cups I think will be brought under the nrl branding. But a nrl2, no!!

All nsw cup and queensland cup clubs are feeder clubs to the nrl clubs. This works, in fact where are all these new nrl clubs going to come from? Perth no, adelaide no, darwin hell no, central coast maybe!!

I'm sure ppl like B Green and J Drinkwater will still come to Europe to play. I hope London don't go down, it'll be so funny to see Bradford and Wakefield relegated.

As a Wakefield fan of 40 years plus I have seen this happen a number of times.... And on no occasion did I find it funny!!

Nor have I found any relegated team 'funny'... Except maybe when it happened to Wigan.

Smith encouraged PNG to put a side into the Qld cup.
The Central Coast already have a side in the NSW cup (Wyong Roos).
Auckland have been playing in the NSW cup for a few years now.
There was mention in the papers this morning that Perth and another side were future targets.
This year more NSW cup games will be played at NRL venues as undercard events and the winner of the Qld cup will play the winner of the NSW cup as an undercard event to the NRL grandfinal.
A few more tweaks and changes and the national 2nd division will be a reality, and it will include sides from places like Auckland, Port Moresby, Perth, North Queensland, Central Qld, and probably Melbourne within a year or two.
All these sides have some professional players now, and with more sponsorship and TV coverage they will have more in the future.

Not true.
All the NSW cup sides except Wyong Roos are, but only some of the Qld cup sides are - about half of them I think.

And we have improved since then, whereas Wakefield are still were they were, happy to just bumble along the bottom with little or no ambition to improve.. Time for the chains around RL's ankle to raise there game instead of trying to drag all down to their level.