kobashi wrote:
Nah I am not buying this.. journey men are coming to super league because England do not produce enough quality players. Until the playing pool is increased nothing will change. You can't say pick young English players, if they are not good enough then it's pointless them playing. How about producing a real reserve grade so young players are not lost from the game.
As for picking players only in super league. First of all that won't stop players going to the NRL and if you only had a team full of super league players then England become a poor side pretty quickly.
you can't expect a 19year old with 0 SL experience to be better than a 25 year old Aussie with years of NRL and queensland cup experience. Perhaps if we stick with and invest in those 19 year old kids and give them SL experience then by the time they are 25 they will be better than that Aussie. Perhaps if we had the best coaches over here, only picked up the better players from elsewhere, if we gave those kids experience and invested in their nutrition, strength and conditioning, had them training in quality environments instead of portacabins and fitness firsts, perhaps if we didn't accept a percentage of our best would be lost to RU, if our best were playing in SL instead of the NRL, then our best would be the best.
It is not one of the major problems that this game faces that our 19/20 years aren't playing enough low quality, low intensity RL. Which is all our reserves would be.
It is a bigger problem that the team who got relegated didn't bother with bringing through their own youngsters, that the team who beat them in the million pound game wont bother either, and the team which got promoted hasn't bothered for years. It is a problem that over the course of 5 years we have managed to successfully demolish the club which produced 5 of the players we see today
