www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague ... ml&BID=480 Good on them for giving this joke match the treatment it deserves.

www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague ... ml&BID=480 Good on them for giving this joke match the treatment it deserves.

"Wests Tigers and Melbourne officials told Rugby League Week they knew nothing about the game".



Marvellous

Completely agree!! It's barely a glorified friendly as far as I'm concerned.

I sincerely hope South Sydney won't be releasing any of their players for State of Origin. After all they wouldn't want them playing in an invented, trumped up game.

And I'm pretty sure they let players play in the NRL All Stars v Aboriginal All Stars game too.

Trying to compare this contrived joke game to State of Origin is just laughable, and I hate Origin. Hopefully Burgess is the first of many players to withdraw.

He is too fragile to play the sport anyway so it seems

The 6 nations and autumn internationals and Lions tours raise the profile much more than the Barbarians.

Things we are all capable of doing and building but for some reason have chosen to ignore in favour of a gimmick game.

Isn't State of Origin a contrived game/competition? If no clubs had let their players be available for State of Origin how would it have advanced and become what it is today?

It could be argued that England v an Exiles/Overseas/Southern Hemisphere side/call them what you will is very similar to the Barbarians games in Union.

It could. Which is why I said

Not really, it's a state vs a state rather than a nation vs a made-up gimmick team. I'm certainly no advocate of Origin but there's really no comparison there. A better example would be the All-Stars vs Aboriginals match mentioned earlier in the thread, but at least that is a pre-season fixture involving two made-up teams and is billed as an exhibition game, rather than purporting to be some sort of international match and replacing genuine internationals.

But they only raise the profile of Union because the 6 Nations and Autumn Internationals are competitive, something we don't have in League.

Let's face it even the stronger of the European nations in Wales & France are nowhere near a match for England, as evidenced by the poor support for the England v France internationals. Sticking Scotland & Ireland in there as well would do nothing to help raise the profile of RL. It would if those countries could put up a fight against England, sadly none of them can.

That's only if you describe England v France as a "genuine international", another word for it would be embarrassing. Personally I'd prefer Yorkshire v Lancashire but I do think that the Exiles game is a far better test for England's players than playing a poor French team.