So England were again outclassed by Australia last night and there'll be a lot of complaints about our rubbishness. I don't actually think England are rubbish other than relative to Australia, and given the cultural and economic gulfs between the sport here and there that seems natural enough.

It does annoy me however that our attempts to narrow the gap, which is the most we can hope for realistically, lack intellectual honesty and rigour. Cutting overseas players in SL is tilting at windmills - a protectionist measure that deals with the symptoms, not the cause of our inability to produce anywhere near the volume of quality the NRL does. It's good for giving Hull KR stick, but not much else.

Here are some things that might make a difference, IMO. I'm not in favour of them all, as I'm not sure damaging SL is worth the difference between maybe 0 and 1 wins against the Kangaroos in the next decade, but unlike blaming Jonny Foreigner, they might work.

Cut SL to 12 teams. Or maybe even 10. This will increase the intensity of the competition and mean each top-flight club gets more Sky money, allowing the cap to be raised. Or ring-fence some of it for development.

Use a 3-man interchange bench. Squads can be smaller, talent can be better rewarded and spread. Marginal, admittedly.

Allow players to indefinately defer the final 1 or 2 years of their SL contracts to go to the NRL (but not RU). The more we have in the NRL and the fewer are lost to RU, the better the England team will be.

Revert to Great Britain. The Sport England money has dried up now anyway (I think). We need every player we can get, and a second tier European competition for England (the Knights effectively), Wales, Ireland, Scotland and France could be a useful stepping stone. And potentially quite compelling in its own right.

Painful, but every choice is a sacrifice. Any other ideas?

Would we be in a 10 team Super League?

Very possibly not. Even if it were 4 other clubs, I don't think it'd be a price worth paying, personally.

I'd actually go the other way and go for 16 clubs if it were economically sustainable. And a whole different focus for the representative game.

But if we want to get closer to Australia we have to face up to some hard choices. It's no doubt partly having to listen to the arguments of Smokey and the like, but after last night I can't take the mewling, wooly thinking that accompanies these entirely predictable 'failures'. Overseas players is not a reason, it is a convenient excuse that stops us examing the underlying issues.

This is me angry, btw.

couldnt care less about the international game its a joke anyway theres only 3 decent countries playing and one of them is miles ahead in reality us and new zealand might get the odd win against the aussies but thats it cutting super league down to ten wont help at all . i had money on the aussies to win by 20 last night and everyone kept telling england were going to win deluded fools

to me the system is wrong in australia kids are taught ball retention and dealing with high bombs. they are also taught missing tackles is a big no no. is it taught here not much imo I played ametaur and im qualified junior coach now I teach kids about ball skills keeping the ball and watching the ball no matter what and not the player. but the monkeys at the rfl guidelines say otherwise. Unless major changes are made to youth coaching and fed through to semi pro and pro clubs. Im sad to to say yesterdays scoreline will be very familiar occurance.

No offense MR but these sort of points of view irritate me because they routinely come out after the international tournament.

People come out with "they're too many foreigners" so youngsters don't get a chance yet propose "a reduction of teams" so effectively you end up with probably fewer chances.

I personally think reducing the amount of clubs and employment opportunities within those clubs whether they be for players / coaches / backroom staff (not to mention the great community work that goes on) for the sake of 80mins at the end of the season is nothing short of stupid.

Also if the game has any realistic aspirations to expand then keeping the home nations is imperative.

Aussies have more people playing the game so inevitably will have more people to pick from which probably manifests it's way to one side running away with the 20mins of the game which is what happened last night.

I still think England's 1st choice pack is stronger than the Aussies it's just going to take a bit more time to bring through a few more half-backs and outside backs.

Despite all of the above if McNamara picked a scrum-half with a kicking game and the basic ability of executing "out the back" plays when attacking a corner and a left centre who actually has an attacking threat from deep then the game may have been a little closer.

The main, most basic, difference i saw yesterday was the ability of the Aus forwards to use footwork enabling them to eat up more ground. Ours were just banging and crashing into the first defender.

Why would I be offended by you agreeing with me?




A bit more time? It's been 40 years. Time to ask a different girl to dance IMO.
I thought the same about the packs. But altough ours do a few more eye-catching things, the Aussies are relentlessly efficient. Morley and Peacock will be gone well before we turn up a half-back to compete with Thurston.

Our forwards got monstered last night

Dont think our forwards were the issue last night, it was the same old same old from England/GB lets try and out muscle the Aussies, how many times have we tried it and how many times have we failed, they are bigger, stronger and fitter than we are and can last for 80+ plus minutes at that game plan.
It was our backs that let us down and the signs were there at the KC in that respect, when a player makes a break ie Tompkins and Briscoe there is no support, Tompkins looked back and saw Briscoe and Yeaman jogging way back and not even bothering so had to come back inside and wait for support, when Briscoe made his break no one followed him at all. If that was the Aussies or the Kiwis there would have been players on either side of them for those breaks we still play one man rugby and leave others to do the work after we have passed the ball, support play has been non existant during this series. As for passing the ball the aussies showed us how to do that last night, I cannot remember one time when we shipped the ball through hands quickly to the flanks to trouble the aussie wingers, the only time it reached Hall was a slow looping cut out ball that he had to stop and check before going for the line ending up with Thurstons arm accross his face and a penalty try for his troubles. As for a kicking game the only kicking we had was a good kicking from the Aussies, Sinfields kicking game was a shadow of his game at the KC and as such we never turned their big guys round or put them under any pressure whatsoever from kicks. Briers showed last week what you can do to the Aussies with a little guile, variation and a good boot on your foot, unfortunatley he did not have the quality in the rest of his team to follow it through, time after time England/GB show promise and adventure but when it matters we revert to percentage one up rugby and let them off the hook. We should play our game not theirs, they do not like the unexpected or variation, we should be doing the old chip and chase, long kicks short kicks and sweeping moves, keep turning them around doing grubbers their big men dont like picking it up around their ankles but will pluck it out the air all day. The Chase experiment has failed in my view, put Sinfield back at loose where he belongs and play Brown and Brough at 6 & 7 then we have a kicking game from Brough, Brown, Sinfield and Wilkin, the Aussies would not know where to look next. With a good kicking game we can put the pressure on and with speedy backs we can exploit the big Aussies as they turn and retreat. We need to get back to basics and learn to pass the ball quickly and accuratley and ensure when a back or forward breaks the line he has some company when he looks to pass the ball. None of the above is due to 14 teams in SL or to many Aussies in the SL it is down to a work ethic and poor coaching, if players cannot pass the ball or back up breaks then they should not be in the squad, the kicking game is the remit of the coach and should be the bedrock of the attack against a big team. We should play rugby league the English way not the Ausstralian way, yes I know most clubs have Aussie coaches but its down to clubs to ensure the Aussie coaches play the game in the expansive and creative way English teams used to play, yes they bring a professionalism to the clubs but look at Shudds and the Pies they have brought negative aussie style rugby to SL and shown its very difficult to combat. Stains and the Whinoes have however shown you can match that agression and control phylosphy with good old fashioned expansive English rugby league and invariably you will come out on top, if only the national coach could see that. Look back to the 80's and 90's when we could beat them on a regular basis, never twice in the same series though, it was the likes of Edwards, Gregory, Sculthorpe and Hanley that did them, players who would do something unxepected something off the cuff and with supporting players we ran them very close on occasions it was always our fitness that let us down and how many times did they pip us in the last 5-10 mins. We have full time fit squads now all we beed is that bit of craft and guile to counter their big guys, a good pack and a good kicking game should beat them and will lets play our game the way it was intended not the WWF version from down under.

Rant over