Yeah its been a poor season really with no stand out teams. All of the top clubs of the last few years have been very up and down and none have looked particularly great.

We were seconds off beating NZ last year, and have beaten them many times in the past as GB

Historically we've shown we can compete in one-off games but in a series not so much. The point is though that the quality of English/British players hasn't changed a huge amount during the Super League era. The difference is that most of the best English/British players are now not playing in Super League.

You've also got a significant reduction in the number of high quality Australian and Kiwi players in the competition. Add the two together and I'd say you've probably got a whole squads worth of top drawer talent missing from Super League compared to a decade ago.

That can't be helping the overall quality of the competition can it?

As an example, if you look at the 1995 World Cup. The English and Welsh teams had 5 players in their squad that had been recruited from Union, with just 1 player from the NRL.

Of the Australian squad that year, 6 would play in Super League, 9 of the NZ would do, plus around a dozen from Samoa and the likes of Adrian Lam too.

In contrast, in the 2013 squad, we had 0 players from Union and 7 (inc Sam and Mossop) from the NRL.

None of the Australian squad have or do play in Super League. None of the Kiwi squad do, with only Lealuia having ever done so. The SL Samoan representatives was down to around 30% of the 95 tally.

Is it really improvement?

Sam was arguably the biggest recent export to the NRL, so we may well expect his departure to lower the quality of the side and SL in general, but imo Bowen has produced more in 2014 than Sam did in 2013. Even when it comes to the youngsters, they are holding their own and often exceeding expectations when they replace established stars.

Not sure how you've come to that conclusion, but Sam scored 23 SL tries and made 21 assists in 2013, so far Bowen has got 11 tries and 12 assists. Bowen has been very good for us this season but he's not in the same league attack wise as Tomkins IMO. I've no doubt he would have been the difference in the tight game, poor performances against Bradford and Hull KR.