Wouldn't bet on it for sure, but isn't it Rugby League?.
Football may be our national sport I don't know, but it's a sad indictment that if so half the players in the premiership are foreigners, some national sport eh!

That's not what makes it the national sport. It's participation. Doesn't matter if there are foreigners playing as well.

Football hoovers up most of the athletic talent in this country, and players can make a decent living quite far down the pyramid. Those that don't will play on a Sunday and when they don't it's all about watching it as a spectator or on TV.

Ultimately if football were as strong in Australia as it is here, the aussies would soon lose a large proportion of athletes who could excel in league and the investment in the NRL would drop along with the standards.

We are trying to compete with an absolute juggernaut of the RL world unfortunately for the British game. The NRL have just renewed their TV deal for 5 years to the tune of £327 million, not to mention Telstra sponsorship worth £50 million over 5 years. The Bunker costs £1.5 million a year to run over there.

It’s the youth set up however that is most impressive for me, with both NZ and Aus really benefitting from players getting picked off young and going to schools of sporting excellence like Kirwan State or Keebra park for example. These are young lads at 13 years old leaving their countries or states at such a young age and coming through these systems so they are primed ready for RL. When Gaz Widdop came through as a junior at Melbourne Storm, he was the only lad living at home, everyone else was from either NZ/Queensland or NSW, at 16 years old. These lads are programmed to be elite athletes from a very early age, their dedication alongside the facilities around them have shown why they are superior. We saw possibly the best NZ team in a long time get beat by an apparently weak/ small Aus team. There’s no such thing as a weak Aus team.

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Their national sport is cricket.

England Football is the sport that really pulls the country together even though, like with RL. there's an underlying dislike of some players. For Welsby, Micky Mac and Tomkins see Kane, McGuire, Rashford and Sterling.

We lost, whatever you say PT, last minute, again, because we haven’t got NRL intensity levels in our RL DNA

I don't get why you make that leap.
It is true that Super League isn't as intense.
But that doesn't mean that's why we lost.

9 of our players have played in NRL. 4 are currently playing and are well regarded.

The player that broke and scored their tries plays for Salford.

So there is no logic that it is just because they play in NRL. They had good players, so did we. We were pretty evenly matched but when it came to the key moments, they reacted better.

I assume you mean Kane and Welsby are universally liked.
But McGuire and micky are not?

Across the whole team, England is better. Luia is better than any standoff we have by a long way, and Crichton is better than any centre we have by a long way. Milford is very good but can be hit and miss. Across the whole team though, I would say we had a better and more even team.

Watkins can be blamed as an individual for us being behind at half-time, but we had no better centre available and he'd had a good tournament. He just had one of those games.

On the other hand, if our best player had been more observant, Radley, a bona fide NRL superstar, we'd have won, because Crichton just waited for that pass for the interception. A better pass and we're over and it's our game.

Apparently Radley stuck the nut on James Bentley at the team hotel after he was giving Wane grief for not picking him for England. I’m sure it’ll all come out. Also some players allegedly playing knock a door run on the Samoan team doors too as they were stating at the same hotel.

Well, lets be honest, someone was bound to do it sooner or later.........

Sorry, I thought we were talking about the standard of play here and the lack of available talent hence the comparisons, there's over 60 million people in this country most sporting people chose football, the foreigners I allude to come for one thing and it's not the climate, and my point still stands where is the talent available to the premiership clubs in this country, it's like rugby league most people complain that there are two many overseas players over here to have a decent national team, then surely the same applies to football.

It does. I don't disagree about the affect it has on the national team, though I wouldn't get rid altogether.
You also get better playing the best players in the world.

We did it in the 70s and the Aussies pulled away from us.

McIlorum doesn’t play NRL. Zero intensity, zero interest, big error. Watkins and Welsby don’t and weren’t brilliant. I thought Radley did ok and was somehow selected for the dream team but we could have managed without him. Doesn’t matter if it’s one or forty points. We lost, again. Again in the dying minutes because we lost our intensity/ concentration and handed over the win. At least Australia aren’t in the wheelchair final.