Much better game! Salford, wow wee….how good have they done? Shows what good recruitment (coaches and players) does for a club. Wire take note and hang your heads in shame!

You think you're special? Saints putting Leeds in their box is like a one-eyed man beating the blind guy. It's nothing to be proud of. Leeds are sh*t. Saints are just the best sh*t team. The ''competition'' is total trash.

Definitely more to come.

Rugby League can't become a top class sport in the UK with the way the game is currently run.

Super League is a failing competition.

We need to make it an ever lesser competition and go down the representative route instead.

We need to go into areas of Scotland, Wales and Ireland and build clubs and get into the Schools to build the game in those places. We need to create an annual 5 nations championships between the 4 home nations + France.

We also need to create an annual War of the roses 3 test series. Obviously we have problems of loyalty on the West of Pennines with that one but it must happen because it should.

The top players can make representive games their priority and play for their clubs when available.

A four year international calender should be as follows.

Year 1 Ashes series Great Britain vs Australia

Year 2 Tri nations series

Year 3 Ashes series Australia vs Great Britain

Year 4 World cup


Representative games are the only way forward. Seeing the best play against the best is what you need in any sporting competition.

Build it and they will come.


Or we could keep going with what we have now?

I prefer a club based approach - like football rather than cricket or RU. But it is about what works rather than what I want, and I agree radical options have to be explored.

It is now a long time since GB/England beat Australia in a game, never mind a series. As you acknowledge, one side of the Yorks-Lancs rivalry is barely aware it exists. Seeds sown in Ireland and Scotland would take a long time give us green shoots - neither are populous countries and both are pretty crowded sports markets already.

If we go down the rep-focused route, I think we need another level between club rugby and the international game. Like in RU, where you have the Irish Provinces and the four Welsh pro clubs affiliated with local semi-pro clubs. Only 2 pro clubs in Scotland. They’ve done similar in the Southern Hemisphere in Super Rugby. However, I think we’d need to be less constrained by traditional or major boundaries to be able create a coherent and balanced competition that could appeal to both the core support and new audiences. That is what the WRU did. Mind you, they’re held in similar esteem to that a lot of us seem to have for the RFL (or the leadership of SL when it breaks away, periodically).

You Yorkshire lads should get more passionate about where you come from then.

It’s nice to know somebody on your side cares.



I liked the description of Yorkshire, by Londoners, I saw a while ago as being famous for puddings, terriers and tea (from Kenya, India and Sri Lanka) plus an intense one-way rivalry with neighbouring Lancashire. I just took the direction for granted, but I could be wrong.

You lot definitely seem more vociferous about it, but doesn't mean it isn't there. If we could get the players to buy into it the fans definitely would.

The gift that just keeps on giving!



Never change LeBron.... you truly are "special"

Bump

You're very much wrong! You can't be a true Salfordian without a massive dislike for everything Leeds.

There are some decent folk that side of the Pennines but when it comes to football, rugby, cricket there are few things sweeter than smashing the Yorkies.

Having worked just outside Halifax I made it my daily mission to wind up at least one work colleague.

My wife is from Manchester (Tameside) and looking at your avatar pic, I’d assume she has at least one thing in common with you. She dislikes Arsenal (especially), Liverpool and Manchester City but Leeds Utd she sees as ‘only Leeds’.

We need to make Yorkshire vs Lancashire the biggest rivalry in UK Rugby league. It needs to become the number one event for fans above Saints vs Wigan or FC vs Rovers or Leeds vs Bradford ect... They can still be big rivalries as they will be but the fans focus should be on the War of the roses series. That needs to be the big event of the fans season, just as the State of Origin is down under.

It's pitting the best against the best and should be what any fan is seeking in entertainment. Why settle for average just because pride tells you that you have to?

With the injuries and suspensions to players these days then your clubs arne't putting out their best team most weeks anyway, so it doesn't matter if your club rugby takes a back seat and doesn't always have it's star players on show because we already have that now. Instead we'll see those star players playing representive games at a better level of rugby than we see now.

Alluding to the title of this thread versus the game this morning with the Roosters v Rabbitohs, No comparison.

That depends what you're comparing. Klien had no control over the game neither. Sounds similar to Friday.

Sadly all 4 finals games this weekend were ahead of anything I’ve seen in SL this year in terms of pace, power, skill and entertainment.

I’m not sure the NRL is a sensible benchmark anymore.

What we have needs to be improved but it should be judged on its own terms, not something that isn’t realistically attainable.

The need is clear and urgent, which should focus minds and hopefully stop the clubs fudging it up. I probably won’t like IMG’s plan, personally - but it has got to be better than more indecisiveness and half measures.

Tell her she's got Leeds & Arsenal the wrong way round.



I think I speak for most Utd fans in saying it's in this order....

1) Liverpool
2) (dirty) Leeds
3) Citeh
4) Arsenal/Chelsea (cockney Wayne Kerr's

)

I guess it depends on age etc as well. Some older fans will have a dislike for the likes of Bolton as they've got an unhealthy obsession with Utd despite having barely played us in 20 or so years. They're still living in the 50's/60's that lot though.



Even City were barely on the radar until the Sheikh rolled into town and then suddenly overnight they changed their tune about rich football clubs.

Surely it should be the sensible benchmark though, it’s literally the same sport. We should be learning from them and we can surely learn more from the NRL than soccer, Union and other sports.

Learn what exactly? Hey guys, be one of the most popular sports and then you'll get the lions share of talented athletes, and massive advertising and tv rights money.

You can't undo a century worth of sports culture. Rugby league is popular (the sport of choice) in a few, economically deprived areas of the country. That's not to say the governing body and some clubs do a good job with the marketing and running of the game, they don't. But there are limitations, and the context over there is totally different and not relevant.

Besides, stuff like that isn't the biggest issue at the moment anyway. The product on the field is crap, and the outcomes are predictable.

Association football is the same in Australia as it is in England, but I doubt fans of the A-League worry massively about the quality of the games they watch vs those in the EPL. That’s maybe a slightly extreme example… but only slightly. We can learn without comparing ourselves to the teacher/example.

Well I’ll certainly agree on that last paragraph.

Agree nrl doesn't have football to compete with like we do over here

Nrl should be a lot more popular than it is given its one or the"bigger" sports in aus

The salary cap difference every aussie team should beat every super league by 80 or 90 points

But we all know when the WWC comes around the aussie team will scrape another 6/10 point win !

The Australia's learnt the game from us and now they do the game much better than us. Maybe it's time for us to learn from them now?

It's not a case of their players are born better, we can produce as good talented players as them yet we haven't beaten them in a rugby war for 52 years.

We have a competition platform to play on with Super league just as they do with their league. So where is it going wrong?

Is it grass roots?
Is it coaching?
Is it standard of refereeing?
Is it money?
Is it leadership?
Is it lack of competativeness in games?

It can't be lack of talented players because you look at recent British players that have gone down there to ply their trade. Sam Burgess and James Graham both big stars down their who became captains of their clubs. Gareth Ellis was his clubs player of the season on more than 1 occasion. John Bateman was awarded their competitions back rower of the season. Josh Hodgson was just a decent hooker in Super League, he went down there and people were putting him on the level of best hooker in their competition alongside the immortal Cameron Smith.

5 years ago we played Australia on their home soil in the World Cup final and lost a very tight game by 6 points. There's no way it should be 52 years since we last beat them in a war.

It’s lifestyle and professionalism. The vast minority of nrl players are dedicated, eat and train right. The vast majority of SL players can be found stumbling around with a kebab in their hand on a Saturday night. Especially around Leeds and Wigan