A draft system is a good idea but to have it you would need to disassociate the academy and u20s system from the clubs. Otherwise there is no motivation for clubs to invest in it. This could be done by having the u20s play as university teams and u18s play as college teams. There are quite a few benefits of doing this. I have written quite a lot in the past pushing this idea. Once this was done then a draft system would be a sensible next step.

Going back to central contracts, which I also think this is a good idea. For one thing it would allow internationals to be forced to be rested a certain amount of the season preventing them from being over played. I think that the way that sky money is distributed needs to be reviewed. Money should be given money for playing players that are eligible to play for England (which itself needs to be tightened up) and another for playing top ups to England players as a part of a central contract system.

That's one way of looking at it. You might also look at it as a way for the RFL to get the international game taken more seriously by the clubs. At the moment clubs pay lip service to supporting the international game, but whenever it comes to a conflict of interests over a player's services or over having a weekend break for internationals they always dig their heels in. This is fair enough, as they pay the wages. But with the current system, no matter what the RFL does, we're never going to be able to put together an England side that has had more than a fortnight's preparation after a very lengthy SL season.

If such a system was set up where the RFL paid a percentage of a player's wage, they would rightly be able to demand a particular amount of that player's services for international preparation and/or place a limit on the number of club matches that player could play in that year. I suspect the clubs wouldn't like this, but if the alternative was losing the player to RU, and if it gave them a little breathing space under the SC, then they would go with it. English International RL would have more power, and would be able to field a better prepared, fresher team.

Also, you say that the system isn't worthwhile because we don't have 20 odd top players. The flip side of that is we don't have enough top players to let the likes of Chris Ashton and Lee Smith go to union without doing anything about it.

Why not just pay players who play in the international set up. lets say a player gets picked in the England squad and plays a match he gets £10k. Would mean players might have an incentive in the league to excel in order to get into the squad. it wouldnt effect the salary cap and no one could be blamed for bas as it'd be open to all england eligable players

Would only work if the England coach is full time, otherwise Smith could have picked Wire players for a bonus!

Thankfully we appear to be going down the full time route.

Four or five internationals a year is not enough to warrant central contracts.