For me we need to seriously reduce the imports in our game in order to improve the quality of our home grown players. Under Nobby at Wigan, Sam Tomkins was in the 20,s and not going any further ( in fact nearly on his way out ) because he thought he was not big enough. Tim Smith got injured and he had to bring him in to the team, the rest they say is h.......



There are too may overseas players + coaches in our game, a lot of young players never get the correct amount of game time in their strongest position because of this, I know results, results, results ! only matter and winning trophies because its a business. The demise started when teams like Wigan, Saints, etc went looking down under in the 80,s and don,t get me wrong I loved watching Kenny, Meninnga, Miles etc, and this trend has continued ever since.



The trade off is, our own lads never get the right chances and hence we never produce the correct amount of talent we should do. There is enough playing talent round Wigan + St Helens alone in RL to produce enough players if they are coached correctly and more importantly given the correct chances.



Its the same in the Premier league, too many foreign players and not enough local lads. How many non-Aussies play in the NRL ? not many, how many non Spanish play in their football league, not many.



If they had kept the overseas quota in and reduced it to 2 players years ago, there would be a lot more Roby,s + Tomkins knocking about in SL.

Daniel Anderson was interviewed on Boots'n'All this evening and he believes that the standard of SL has deteriorated since he was here, citing the increase to 14 teams as one reason. He doesn't think we have the player pool to support that number of teams.

I totally agree with him.

I don't think he said we have deteriated. He said we have not moved on - the level has stayed the same we have stagnated and fourteen teams he thinks is two too many.

Ditto.

He was trying to avoid being overly negative. He was going to say 'plummeted', but didn't want to offend anyone so changed it to stagnated. He's right, there isn't the player pool to support 14 teams with any real quality.