Quote ="Finfin"Only idiots don't study history and learn from it. RL was at a very low ebb in the early to mid 70s which coincided with a ban on Aussies and Kiwis into our game combined with a lot of the best forwards defecting to Oz - Lowe, Stevo, Gray, Ashurst, Reilly spring to mind. Sounds famliiar? Crowds were incredibly low in this period - 4000 was the norm at Wigan, Saints, Leeds and Wire with internationals poorly supported.
The game and crowds only started to improve in the early 80s when Hull signed Ah Koi, Leluai, OHara and Kemble which paved the way for Sterling, Kenny, Meninga, Lewis etc. Top quality RU players followed in Davies, Tait, Offiah and top coaches entered the fray in Smith, Monie and Lowe as the game entered a pretty positive period. 50,000 attended an international at Old Trafford and more at Wembley. Top players were genuine household names.
Obviously a transformation would be more difficult now with the strength of RU, but one things for sure, the gradual drip drip of star names out of the game coupled with nothing much coming in the other direction will only result in the game going in one direction.'"
You are right. I remember trying to argue this point a few years ago with people that were saying we should cut out the overseas players to increase standards of British RL. The reason clubs sign overseas players is because they are better than the British players they can get, thats a reflection on the relative quality of the British players at the time. If you stop or restrict imports that's not going to make your British players better.
The best British youngsters have always come through in to first team anyway. Compared to most sports RL has quite a high rate of bringing through home grown youngsters in to the first team. The real problem that for so many years people wanted to ignore is that at most clubs there are a lot of home grown players in SL teams that are just not up to it. When people say "top young talent can't get a chance because of the Aussies taking up spots" you could always point to a good 3/4 British players in most clubs that were no more than average journeyment pros, so they were taking the "top young talent" spot just as much as the overseas players were.
I think a lot of British fans lived in a dream world that there were these superstar youngsters that clubs were releasing because of overseas players, but the youngsters clubs were releasing were just the guys that ended up going down to National League. If there were any next-Robinson or next-Hanleys that got released to the NL, we would soon hear about them after they scored 80 tries in a season and got signed by an SL club.
Another big myth that hasn't helped us, is where people say "players just need to get more game time to get good". To be honest you can generally tell if players can handle SL within about 10 games or so. Warrington fans go on about Kevin Penny like this, Cullen/Lowes "ruined him", if we hadn't signed Hicks etc Penny could have had more experience and turned in to Martin Offiah. If you have guys that are just not up to it, then playing them again and again and again isn't going to turn them in to world beaters.
Unfortunately now the exchange rate and the new TV deal in Aus has effectively restricted our overseas purchases the way that lots of fans wanted, but this isn't heralding a load of new superstars, it is just meaning that guys like Danny Brough are being seen as the cream of the crop.
