You should say we have the MOST forwards with experience, not necessarily the best. We haven't got a real line-breaking forward now Ali's left - it's more of a grafting pack unless Hauraki steps up a gear. For all his faults, a player like pre-suspension Gareth Hock would add enormously to our forwards IMO.

It is a myth that our players play a lot more games.

If the Aussies don't make the play offs they play 24 games 3 less than our players in far more intense competition

If they do make the play off again they play 3 less games in a far less intense competition

The top players if the make the final will play 24 regular season, 4 play off games and 4 SOO/test games 32, our players will play 27 regular games, 4 play offs and 1 mid season i.e. 32 games.

As for the CC the vast majority of these games are less taxing than a training session.

On squad size Melbourne Storm had a squad of 23 players less than Leeds at 25

In test matches we see the Aussies run away with it in the last 20 minutes regularly which suggests their fitness is significantly superior. The idea that our players are incapable of 80 minutes once a week withouth the need for a regular week off agains suggest we have some conditioning issues.

I didn't claim our players played a lot more games. You added the term "a lot". But more than 10% more could be a factor none the less. Picking a squad at random - Canterbury Bulldogs - which you appear to have done by picking out Melbourne Storm, I find that their squad last season comprised 28 players. And while many CC games may lack the intensity of a training session (I've no way of knowing whether this is true BTW), the remaining proportion almost certainly take a fair bit out of the players, as evidenced by the number of times we see a team win the CC only to collapse during the run in or play offs.

Jack Reed, hardest worker in the NRL. How many games did Sinfield play? www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/nrl/j ... 6207436748 Note that Reed's record includes pre-season trial games. The Aussie off season is at least 4 weeks, maybe up to 6 weeks longer than ours. That's the major difference since that's when all the bulk of the conditioning & strength work is done. Fewer games would help our chances of competing on a level playing field, until then we have to accept that SL is probably behind the NRL.

Jack Reed, hardest worker in the NRL. How many games did Sinfield play? www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/nrl/j ... 6207436748 Note that Reed's record includes pre-season trial games. The Aussie off season is at least 4 weeks, maybe up to 6 weeks longer than ours. That's the major difference since that's when all the bulk of the conditioning & strength work is done. Fewer games would help our chances of competing on a level playing field, until then we have to accept that SL is probably behind the NRL.

Me too.

Brian McDermott thanks the patrons of SOuthstander for their input and advice about his tactics and team selection, particularly during the course of the 2011 season.

He's printed all the suggestions, criticisms and observation off and he and the squad will be using them during preseason training.........to wipe their s.

Except Ian Kirke. Mac is making him memorise each and every word written by me.

Everyone accepts the intensity in SL is nowhere near what it is in the NRL. We don't have anything that compares to Origin - even in its current dumbed-down state. Virtually every player who plays Origin on a Wednesday plays in the NRL at the weekend so they are playing two games a week three times in the year. Our players have an issue with doing this once at Easter and the standard/intensity of the final game shows how much the players struggle physically

And how much of this difference do you think is attributable to having two less interchanges, as opposed to the player pool, the national attitude to sport, the training facilities etc? The NRL is a superior competition which happens to have two less interchanges per game, not because of it.

I never suggested the extra fitness was down to 2 less interchanges - what I said was if we reduced the number of interchanges then it may impact positively on the overall standards of fitness of our players.

Maybe we could have less interchanges say 8 per game but more bench options say 6 players.

To clarify, Amor cannot be recalled to Leeds at any point in 2012, but they have until July 2012 to decide if they want him for the 2013 and 2014 seasons.

Not sure if this is what you are getting at or not

[urlhttp://www.therhinos.co.uk/news/17643.php[/url

I can't quite work out whether you're saying that Melbourne only had 2 players in their squad, or that Leeds had 48? Both seem unlikely to me.

Seems a crazy arrangement