Jake the Peg wrote:
Amazing that there are all of these brilliant players sat around in the reserve grades when half of the overseas players with 100+ NRL apps come over here and are no better than the players we have already.
Just maths innit?
There are outstanding, good and ordinary players both here and in Australia. And in similar proportions, looking at the right hand ends of normal distributions. The absolute numbers though are (crucially) different.
Let's say that England has a dozen 'outstanding players' at any one time. Players that wouldn't look out of place in State of Origin. Not quite enough for one a team in SL (especially with the likes of S. Burgess, J. Graham and G. Ellis heading over there), or to fill out an International XVII. Also they tend to be forwards, leaving us short in the backs.
Australia, I'd guesstimate for these purposes has 50.
Let's now say that for every outstanding player there are 10 good players.
That's 120 Englishmen and 500 Australians.
Just over nine Englishmen for each English SL club, meaning that the 17 man team and 25 man squads have to be filled out with ordinary players.
The Aussies have more than 30 good players per NRL team (though the NRL is expanding, of course), which is a surfeit. So good Antipodeans come over here and take the place of ordinary Englishmen in SL squads.
The numbers I've used for illustration are arguable, but the principle is sound, I reckon.
Now you get the occasional spectacular Aussie failure, but mostly they come across and do a good job - which is why there is always demand in the market.
Coaches who choose what you might call 'average Aussies' over 'promising Brits', do so for similar reasons that I'd choose a
small pile of banknotes over a
big bag of coppers. You're judging the groups by different standards, when the only one that matters to a coach is what they offer the team.
The reasons for this disparity are, I suspect, to do with coaching, sporting culture and, most important, junior player numbers.
There is nothing amazing about the situation. As the NRL gets richer and bigger, a new balance will develop. And England will most likely still only have a dozen outstanding players - because quotas don't make junior coaches better or get more kids playing the game.
