just watched his first game for cronulla.it's funny but when he was over here it took him a few games to get to full fitness,over there he looks sharp from the off.also over there they seem to share the workload a lot better and barrett had less tackling to do,over here he was doing lots of tackling and was often the one doing the impotant ones.plus he looked a lot happier and more enthusiastic.seems to me he was wasted over here,maybe bad coaching.?

maybe the Aussie game is just better all-round. The Cowboys Broncos game was outstanding considering it was the first competitive match of the season. So much quicker and the attacking play was much more entertaining...

he is a hasbeen now Wigan don't let players just go when there still good enough for superleague he will never make it in that pi$$ poor league !

of course its a better league. i don't find it surprising at all that they seem so sharp on the opening weekend. look what manley did to the best we hav to offer, and that was with only a warmup game against harlequins under the belt. we are light years behind he nrl no matter how much eddie and stevo bang the super league drum.

That's the bottom line isn't it, it's a tougher, faster comp over there. If we had that World Club Challenge the same as in '97 I reckon UK teams would still get whopped most games. There's a few more classy players over there to share the burden so Trent won't have to be such a talisman as he was for us.

We'll get there one day, I have faith!

Not while Fannyball is our main sport i don't think we will.

Sadly, I think this is true. Far too many of our young athletes are diverted into the round ball game, not to mention Union, which is also growing in popularity at grass roots level.

Even in Wigan, many of our youth RL teams have lost players to football.

it kills me to say it and i hope i am not right but i can only see the beautiful game of Rugby league getting worse not better.

It has been for the last 5 years in this country.

i was only looking at the crowds this weekend

just to pluck one out of the air quins v warrington just over 3K how can the game survive like that. IMO and i will probably get shot down dont think bringing in french and welsh sides is going to help. I have always said and will say it again we should look to cumbria and merge some of the lower sides around the northwest to bring them forward.

When my brother in law played at landon broncos they were bailed out of 2.5million pounds worth of debt i would sooner see that money being spent on lower teams to bring them up to scratch.