Im just watching this mornings Blacktown/North Sydney game from the NSW Cup. Its very comparable to the standard of a lot of SL. Wakefield v Huddersfield type standard.

You just have to accept the 2 competitions are totally different and we should be light years behind them. No point comparing the 2 competitions. Their budgets, player pool, junior development, facilities and weather conditions are far better than ours. They should be miles ahead of us in the same way Man City should be way ahead of any Aussie soccer club.

Covid will set us back even further in truth, our community clubs will have been hit hard and junior development will take some recovering from.

Totally agree Marty. Very good points raised re covid setting us back over here, some of the smaller clubs may never recover

I was thinking about this earlier and the main thing I think will be affected is the development of some of the younger kids in the UK. Losing that year might leave a gap in readiness of some academy players going into super league which is vital for a lot of teams .

There has always been a bigger pool of quality players in the NRL/ARL. I imagine the fact that there have been fewer disruptions to sports during the pandemic down under will put them further ahead in comparison with over here.

I fear for our chances in the autumn. We've lost a few players of real quality in the past few years and nobody is near filling their boots - S,Burgess, Graham, O'Loughlin, Hall, McGuire etc.

The point at which it was financially better for someone to play in Australia than SL is when the beginning of the end. Fewer decent Aussies would come here at the end of their careers. Also, the best UK players went down under too.

There also seems to have been a shift in NZ players. 20 years ago SL had lots of current NZ players. Hardly any these days. Very sad

NRL is boring and more like Yawnion. Defenses are still Crap enough here to see some good trys.....!!

Yeah the only way we'll compete internationally is for us to get our best players playing in the NRL, and that's assuming we can develop enough to get their interest.

Playing SL will only take them so far.

The chances of SL ever competing financially with the NRL are slim to non-existent.

Eels Storm on sky this morning 9am

I'm not convinced by the 'we need our best players playing in the NRL for England to improve' argument. Sending our best players over just makes our competition weaker. I'm not sure it makes them that much better either. The Australian media love Josh Hodgson, but he's still the 4th or 5th best hooker England have.