er....wriggle away, but you did get there all on your own and you have nobody but yourself to blame.

Come on - I mean there is a difference. Andrew Thornley made one appearance when on loan for us against Saints this season. I would never say "he's been playing first team rugby". Widnes obviously should take a lot of the credit for Myler but we did sign a 17 year old half back and start him from day one of the season which in most cases you wouldn't expect to happen.

How many games do you have to play in the first team before you are classed as playing first team rugby in your opinion? Most of the credit for developing myler into the player he currently is is down to widnes, which is why i originally posted as it was suggested that salford were responsible for mylers development.

i'd go a step further and say players trained by a club dont cost under the salary cap until aged 21. add to that heavy compensation for taking a player under 23 from his original club.

I see a lot comparisons with aussie players. remember they have had a bigger talent pool for a longer period of time not to mention far superior junior structures and coaching. RL's junior talent pool has only really gone national here in the last decade and we have a lot of catching up to do in coaching etc..... but on the bright side look at places like london, the junior development and amateur game there is exciting for RL's future.

It's all about handling pressure. Playing at London the pressure is off. Expectations are not that high there. Playing at Wigan the pressure is on with the historical stature of the club and Moran simple didn't handle that.

I thinks it more to do with the fact that wigan used him in the wrong role, he was a great support player (ala mcguire, dorn) but not a great organiser, and wigan seemed to want to use him as an organiser.

Yeah...right PMSL!
3 seasons running, playing for a mid table side with the smallest pack in the league he played 81 Superleague games and scored 64 tries.
1st year at Wigan he played 25 games and scored 15 tries and I believe was your second top try scorer that year, so no problem handling pressure at all..........

the following year he was made the scapegoat for Wigans pi55 poor form.

The only club where Dennis Moran is not applauded and held in high regard is Wigan and that's because he was an easy target.

Mmmm...do you see a trend developing

And next season when Tomkins gets dropped like a hot spud for failing to live up to the hype.

I would agree with this post, standards are equalising not falling

....except that I would rate Edwards higher than that. He developed his game to be much more than a support player.
Clarke v Westerman I agree......but Clarke made better use of his skills by having a ruthless attitude to training and winning.

The one thing that Edwards and Clarke had in common (and I knew Phil Clarke at college and played a couple of times with him) is an absolute dedication to their game and personal development... in my mind, alongside the likes of Mike Gregory they were the first generation in this country to be completely professional in attitude and approach. I fully respect that

What a load of nonsense.

Standards haven't fallen and the cap is working. I used to think this and that the game was more skilful in the old days. I will agree that it was better to watch. Then I realised I was watching tapes of Widnes in their heyday. I was watching the top of the table clashes. Also if you look at these games the defences are all over the place, meaning there were far more gaps to score from.

Full-time professionalism has changed the game. The way the game is played has completely changed and resulted in this impression that it is less skilful. It is played at a completely different pace now and requires different skills. The Great Britain of today would totally dominate the Great Britain of 20 years ago and that's not just down to full-time professionalism. They wouldn't be able to cope with the speed or fitness levels and would be ineffective against must better organised defences.

The other thing that has affected matters is Union going pro. Even if we didn't have a salary cap they would still poach our best players. They aren't just going for money but for profile and media attention. Then of course there are the players that we aren't getting from defections. Even players like Sean Edwards came from Union at a young age.

The salary cap is evening out the competition. Some people like to make out like Saints and Leeds still dominate the league but nowhere like the same way as they used to. Saints were outclassed against Huddersfield on Sunday in a way that wouldn't have happened 5 years ago.

It is clearly better for the game and we need to stick with it.