well after being behind in cricket, union and RL thats good to hear its not all one sided.

I do wonder if the Northern mindset and use of language holds back development in the South.

When, as a young man, I lived for a year in the South and had, for the first time, Southern friends I was jealous of how their nights-out always seemed to be amazing, fantastic and brilliant. Then I went out with them and discovered it was at best 'awright'. Northerners are phlegmatic (or miserable), southerners are effusive (or vapid). When Inverdale tells you a Six Nations game has been good and you think 'nay lad, 'twere s***e.', you aren't actually disagreeing, just using different linguistic norms.

To illustrate, here are some northern rugby terms with the southern equivalent in brackets:

Pigging woeful (scope for improvement next week)
Average (decent)
Not bad (very good)
Quite pleased (ecstatic)

Eddie and Stevo are just speaking Southern, because that is the language of Sky Sports.
This also why we should be wary of signing 'decent' players from RU.

so the only thing that SL had over the NRL was speed of the game... now whats left for SL.

this mornings game of broncos v cowboys was far superior in every aspect (skill, pace, defence, excitement) then any SL game or trial I've seen this season.

dragons / storm was even better.

And theres me enjoying the season so far! I would much rather see competitive games, played by teams that even with injuries galore keep putting in gritty performances than seeing one team swipe everyone to one side week after week.

Sure the odd bit of utter class is enjoyable to see, but as easily dull if the same teams keep doing it.

Im enjoying the super league season and hope for a few more twists yet... although if Leeds dont win again I'll eat the chip on my widnesian shoulder

This is one of the best and most accurately inciteful posts I've seen on rlfans. An excellent comment on the north south divide, rugby union vs rugby leauge and also the sensationalist bent of the mass media. Great stuff! (My time in the south was similar.)

Regarding the topic, yes, it seems early season to be a slightly watered down competition, but we were always expecting this for a couple of years in line with the move to 14 franchised teams - short term pain, long term gain, etc. If as a result in 5 years time we're watching even 6-8 teams built in the manner of Saints and Leeds through the current long-term youth projects in place at most clubs then it will all be worth it.

Keep the faith everyone.

(It's also not helped this season by anyone who has ever gone 35 in a 30 zone being denied entry to the comp)

skill - do you know how many errors both side produced yesterday? 28 in total, 14 each

pace - yesterdays game was the quickest NRL i've ever seen

defence - i'm not buying that at all..both teams goaline defence was rather poor..especially golden child israel falou..it's no good being able to jump 10ft in the air if his idea of defence is to plant his feet and watch people run round him...in the game there was 50 missed tackles

excitement - true it was exciting,in fact it's the best NRL game i'm seen in years


all in all, we saw a 'proper' RL game, proper tackling,less wrestling,defenders where completing tackles and getting off their attacker just as quick as in SL as a result the PTB were faster,the game was faster....all that resulted in far more error than we normally see in the NRL.because they became tired...the error will no no doubt come down when they get upto full match fitness....if they continue the quick pace...


or will they revert to type and go back to the boring,stat based,percentage RL??