[urlhttp://www.superleaguefans.com/rugby-league/2012/06/15/ellery-hanley-england-rl-miles-behind-aussies.html?[/url

When Hanley speaks, people listen. Or they should.

Yep well he finished 8th out of 13 on Dancing On Ice so you can't always be the best now can you.

Sadly it's true.

Just look at the remonstrations of 'Brian' on the other thread defending McDermott.....even though we have been crap enough to suffer massacres for the first 30 mins (Warrington) if not the whole match (Saints and Wigan).... and also dire enough to lose pathetically devoid of any ideas against Bradford, Leeds can still finish in the top 5, if not top 4. Ugghh.

Hi Swiftcorn

Don't say his name too many times. He appears and talks absolute b0ll0cks with Baby Oil in one hand and his Hampton in the other!

Noooooooo!!!

It can't be. Have we morphed into one ? I love Senior I do, honest. Let's bring him back: he will the answer to all of our problems and make Leeds great worthy champions again in 2012.

Swift Keithcorn doesn't like Senior!


[iVeteran Leeds Rhinos and former Great Britain centre Signs 1yr Deal with the Rhinos for 2013[/i

I bumped into Hanley a few years ago in a club. It was late on, I had had a few of course, and he was just relaxing with the company of a huge bodyguard/friend type. I was star struck, to an extent. I wandered over and struck up conversation (probably came across as a bit of a-tit, surprise-surprise). He's not someone I would expect to bump into at silly-o-clock in the morning. But he was humbling, entertaining and came across as a good lad. I know people who have mentioned in business terms getting their fingers burnt with adventures with Hanley, but I'll go with my gut on this.

That's better but next time throw in a "hall to centre".

Swiftcorn doesn't like anyone. Especially not Swiftcorn.

This is starting to annoy me now.

You can’t compare ESL with NRL until both are on a level footing. Amateur RL in Oz gets literally millions of $AUD pumped into each year. Their U11’s have full time professional coaches.

There would need to be either a massive investment (from somewhere) into amateur clubs in the UK or for the Australian drinking/gambling culture to completely change before you can compare apples with apples.

Maybe Ellery could start by getting involved in the game at grass roots and try and improve the game in this country instead of chelping to Aussies about how far behind we are.

[urlhttp://www.superleaguefans.com/rugby-league/2012/06/15/shock-horror-ellery-hanley-tells-the-truth.html[/url

All a bit lazy to me to just blame 'too many teams'. The amount of teams would be fine if the amount of quality players was higher so actually its a grass roots problem. Sounds like a lazy answer to please the masses who worship everything Aussie when it comes to RL. You could easily make the argument that all these 'intense' games the Aussies have to play could catch up with them by the end of the season so i don't buy into the intensity argument really.

Wheras in his playing days we had a real competition going over here. You never had any idea who was going to win the trophies or which teams would be promoted or relegated each year.

Yeah the Challenge Cup winners in particular was a real mystery during the years Hanley played.

Fair enough , but suggesting that until all teams are of equal quality and the intensity of weekly round games improves , is nothing most fans dont already know is it .

Next week Hanley tells us bears $hit in the woods .

The guy does an interview and gets asked a question. He answers it and it gets posted on a message board. People complain about what he said.

The Black Pearl has given his opinion, which he's qualified to do given his standing in the game. We are behind the Aussies, and seem to be slipping even more. I agree that Ellery should be involved in improving the game. Guys like him, Edwards, Davies, Robinson should be used more. The Aussies continue to tap into the knowledge of our greats. We let them wander off

Nobody is bagging Ellery - he's correct of course. The general drift of the thread is "we all know this". My own opinion is that the game here is a product that's sold to people rather than an attempt to generate great rugby league teams. The Championship can be very entertaining to watch, two teams of equal intensity levels and reasonable skills can make a good game to watch. However, you aren't going to beat the Aussies with a team from the Championship.

Football should teach us an important lessons - if you fluff the ego of a certain few British "stars", allow floods of overseas players fill the league and then have no structure to the game you play you get the situation where you can beat Aussie club sides in a one off but when you get 13 Englishmen toegther it's like they all brought their white canes with them when they try and play together.
As it was pointed out during the Germany - Holland match the other night, the Germans failed miserably and didn't even get out of their group at the last Euros, so they went away and re-thought their entire footballing philosophy and national team structure - 2 years later they got close to the WC final and now they are comfortable favourites for the Euors and look awesome. This is something England are utterly incapable of, we have no national structure or formation to the game.
We are quick to talk about how "ordinary" many aussie players seem when they come to England - that's not the point - they usually look ordianry because they are required to play with a blindfold on as they have no clue what the rest of their English teamates are doing.



It's the same in League. We've been banging on for decades how you can take pretty much any 13 Aussies and they will know how to play together - you add high quality players to that mix and you have a team we simply can't beat. It's a fact. We haven't yet gotten to grips with at a coaching or administrative level in this country. We spend far too much time fiddling with the PTB interpretation tying to make the game "look" nicer on tele to plebs who don't understand what RL is all about.

The irony of what Ellery says - and the point I pulled him up on, was that in 92 we got closest to beating them in a series mathematically since 1970 and never that close since (although I still think we were actually closer in 90 - but hey). And of course we know back then there was only one team in the competition and in the famous Melbourne battering we handed out the entire pack came from Wigan. They knew each other, they were good players, they were a great team and they were used to winning. Add a couple of brilliant individuals from other clubs and we were at our most competitive.
Get a consistant playing model, implement it, set expectations for individual skill lelve in key criteria that fit the model and watch us become better at international level.

FWIW I thought the last Origin game was turgid. It was more conservative than the Bullingdon club. A rugby ball would move faster through my colon than it did around that pitch.

I agree with pretty much all of that. I think we not only need to completely rethink our national structure, but we also need to completely rethink our entire pathway
I think the time has come to take youth development away from our SL clubs, some of them clearly arent up to it, and the others have their priority as the first team, Leeds will produce the player Leeds want, not necessarily the best player. Thats not a criticism of them, its just acceptance of their priorities.

I think it is probably the time we looked at developing our youngsters centrally where making the players the best they can be is the priority over doing what is best for an individual club.

Which is fine, but the elite coaches will invariably go where they can make the best living - the professional game.

This

Believe one of the greatest rugby players this country has produced or a load of overweight Leeds fans who rugby knowledge stretches to a game of tag rugby once a year

hmmmm

Yeah, because All these fat Leeds fans have actually disagreed with what Hanly said. Just because your a great player doesn't mean your excempt from talking 5hite! Look at Gary Schofield and Alex Murphy.