We are. Just and have a look at the parks on a Saturday and Sunday morning and see what the kids are playing.

At my lad's age group, there were 7 divisions of football (11 a side). Granted there are quite a few out of town teams but there were many more Warrington based football teams than Rugby teams.

Growing up in the late 80's/early 90's, my age group had two football leagues. When I started playing Rugby, there was a choice of two teams and they ended up merging as one team folded.

In my 20's, I was playing Saturday and Sunday league football. Again there were enough teams to support five or six leagues and only a handful or RL teams.

I also find that if I'm talking to people out and about, at work or in pubs, there are a lot more football fans than rugby fans.

Re Briers....it was.
Briers can be clearly heared saying to our players as they prepared to exit the tunnel...
"Relax lads and enjoy the game"!
The biggest load of bollox he has ever issued....

When he ought to be saying.
""Get out there, and rip into them."!!!

The one area that Morgan Smith was obviously strong was his passing from dummy half.

I am baffled by this. Passes to 1 foot or more above first receivers head, denies the first receiver the time needed to do anything plus the chance of error.

I would have thought this was the sort of thing that could be nailed in training, surely? It's not a recent thing either.

...nailed when you are a junior?

This shoddy first play and the fact that it's game after game is really unforgivable

What I don't get is how in England it's always presented as a binary choice: either an athlete with limited skill or a creative genius who lacks physical attributes. The Aussies creative players have superb physical attributes as well! Andrew Johns was built like a loose forward and could king hit people in the tackle. He played hooker at international level for a while and was a tackle machine. And yet he had the complete passing and kicking game. Look also at the strength and speed of Thurston, Cronk, Cameron Munster. These guys have bags of talent but they are superb athletes and physically they aren't lacking against anyone.

Also if you watch the NRL you see amazing feats from their outside backs, unlikely catches to keep the ball in the field of play, one handed offloads and blind passes at full pace, kicks in to space on the run. Their outside backs are built like tanks and incredibly fast but they seem to have these freakish ball handling skills as well.