Quote: Cruncher "
Looking at the Wigan team that lined up last night ... it struck me how they probably wouldn't last five minutes against our own class of 2010, let alone the great teams of earlier decades.
Things are in a bad way at present. But even if we get whitewashed 3-0 in this series, which I expect, the RFL will ignore it.'"
Part of me thinks we had a good team in 97 but most teams got hammered off the Aussie teams, also the great Saints sides of the early 2000s won against Brisbane but got dispatched against Roosters in 2003.
I do think in years gone by most SL teams were better/stronger and now most teams seem a shadow of their former selves chocked full of average Joes. When I look at the likes of us in the early 2000s we had a team full of legends and internationals, players like Rads, Carney, Dallas, Connolly, Lam, O'Connor, Newton, Smith, Cassidy, Furner and Farrell with a host of young up and coming lads who went on to achieves decent career either here of elsewhere like Hock, Lockers, Wild, Brown, Robinson etc.
When I look at our team now the only players worthy of getting in that team would be Sam, Micky Mac, Flower, Farrell and future stars like Manfredi and Williams.
You look at Saints and they are bang average across the park other than Roby.
The only way RL will reach those standards again is cold hard cash, you can have the best youth set up, coaches, scouts, etc but money talks, once the hard work has been done and it's time to reap the rewards the players are gone.
For me over the next 1 - 2 years I see most of our decent players going to RU or NRL like Sarginson, Bateman and Gelling. If I was an RU scout I'd be after Manfredi all day long as I think he'll be a superstar in years to come but I think he'd be more suited to fullback, he reminds me of Slater in his kick return.
So there it is, we need cash, how do we get it?
Merchandise? Bums on seats? Sponsorship? Rich owner?
Doesn't the money from Sky cover the cap? If so there should t be much of a holdback, if it comes at the expense of smaller clubs then I'm sorry, sport is capitalist and has to be be otherwise it pushes the sport back. The way I see RL at the minute it's run like the public sector and needs to be privatised so to speak.i don't agree with doing that with business but with sport i do.
There you go, thoughts?