Quote Famous="Famous"Seriously? How can the top clubs losing their star players year on year to the NRL and other codes not mean the competition is weakening? How can no good players coming from the NRL anymore not mean the competition here is getting weaker? The youngsters coming through are great but how is watching glorified academy matches some weeks because clubs dont even have proper squads signs of strong competition?
Yes Cas have been great and have been the best team to watch this season but so what? One swallow doesnt make a summer.
Do you seriously think Wigan are anywhere near as good as last year? We have had 7 or 8 players out on a regular basis and could still finish top. Saints are a poor team compared to teams of the last decade and they are top, Leeds are probably as bad as they have been for some time as are Warrington who arent a patch on the teams of 2 or 3 seasons ago. The other top club of the SL era, Bradford, has just been relegated. The likes of Hull FC, Hull KR, Wakefield have been as big a shambles as they have ever been. Indeed Hull FC are a big club and have seriously gone backwards since winning the Challenge Cup and getting to the Grand Final.
With your comments about the NRL and Super League I can only presume you dont watch the NRL. In the NRL teams strive for excellance and improvement each year which means that it is never predicatable and anyone can beat anyone. All, or most clubs, spend to the cap and it is a real challenge just to finish in the top 8 never mind win it. Almost every club has some star players and the salary cap is growing each year, and it dwarfs ours which also means it can target the best players from all over. The intensity, speed and fitness levels are on a different planet to SL never mind the skill levels.
Then we have with Super League, a competition where the salary cap has remained largely stagnent for over a decade and the amount of star players declines year on year. What few are left are has beens whose best years are behind them. At times this season some games have even resembled a u23 competition. Yes there is the odd upset because the top teams dont take half the matches seriously, as it is a doddle to finish in the top 8 and they dont really matter, but that is not the competition getting stronger.'"
Yes, I watch the NRL, and it too has it's top teams and bottom teams, and the odd drubbing too. The gap may not be as wide and the overall standard is indeed better than SL, but it's by no means like watching a different sport. That's just meaningless hyperbole.
The trouble with your argument is all the contradictions. When a top NRL side loses against a bottom side it's because the competition is close. When the same happens in SL it's because the top team didn't take it seriously. It's a doddle to get into the SL top 8 yet plenty of teams make it one year and then don't the next. Of course this isn't because teams like Cas and Widnes are improving, it's because everyone else is poor. The NRL top 8 is anyone's guess, right? Yet a few teams make it EVERY year. And the fitness and intensity of the NRL isn't just better, it's "on a different planet", yet all these SL players somehow manage to go and play in the NRL. What your doing is doggedly putting a negative spin on everything SL and a positive spin on the same things in the NRL.
The NRL is better, it's not a different sport.
