Sounds exactly like what the SL clubs have been doing with NRL signing for the last few years.



Fantastic post, BTW. I assume you are such a passionate RL fan that you would look forward to the demise of the game in an important country? What a low-life.

Which top players have SL been Cherry picking?



I have no time for a League that does not build its foundations and Juniors and instead tries to buy quick fixes from another League that has developed its players.





Personal insults will get you nowhere.







The amount of second rate imports in the English game is a sad indication of the outlook of the game. Not 1 or 2 but 5 or 8 per team.



?



ps Its not that important a Country.

Australia see's the Kiwis as their rivals and england/gb as their whipping boys that they struggle to get motivated to flog time and time again.

When you see players like Flannagan and Tandy making it in the NRL I'm sure it will make all avg SL players realise it isn't as hard as its made out to be down under!

You do realise that Tandy is an ex NRL player don't you?

Who is Flannagan?

indeed I do, I also realise how he struggled to hold down a 1st team spot in SL.

And looked distinctly average in a poor doncaster team not so long ago.

You may well see Kiwis as your rival, but in a sport with limited international opportunities to not see GB as important is incredibly short sighted. If you really ' [ihave no time for a League that does not build its foundations and Juniors and instead tries to buy quick fixes from another League that has developed its players[/i' then you should be comdemning the NRL consistent with your initial post. As for not developing juniors, you clearly don't watch English RL. Tim Sheens seems to think differently. I also note that you think it's fine to insult an entire Rugby League playing nation but don't enjoy having your own shortcomings pointed out.

While I don't agree with any of what you say, the biggest question I have is why are you sounding so happy about what would be the possible demise of rugby league in the UK?

Just off the top of my head, here are three players that were current Aussie internationals at the time they signed for a SL club (as the ARL don't pick players that are leaving):

Shaun Berrigan (and GF MOM at the time).

Craig Fitzgibbon

Matt King



There's probably more. Not to mention Kiwi internationals, SoO players, etc.





But you do apparently have time for another league (NRL) that are starting to buy quick fixes from another league (SL) instead of developing its own players?



Hypocrisy reigns supreme.





As long as you know why you're going nowhere, that's OK...





We get it, we're not as good as the Aussies in the depth department. But it's not as bad as you make it out. It's a lot better than it used to be.





Don't Aus vs Eng/GB games tend to get bigger crowds than Aus vs NZ over there? Bit strange if we aren't important...

I don't care about your criticism of myself, I thought I already made that clear.

Tim Sheens does not think differently he said



"If we pick off the top 10 per cent of their players and they're playing over here, in some ways it's a fair trade"

The thread was related to signing players form the English CURRENT Test team (at the right price)



Australia does develop its own Juniors and regularly supples dozens of players to other Test countries and Leagues, have a look at how many Aussies played for other nations in the last World Cup, including the winning team.

I am not looking forward to the demise of Rugby League in England but I can be critical about how they go about their business.

Even when new criteria is applied by a weak governing body (the RFL) all the Clubs look for loopholes to get around the system rather than plough some money into a solid Junior system.

Any League that has around 30-50 % of their first team players imported should ring alarm bells.

How many of the three players were CURRENT Test players for Australia



Fitzgibbon wasn't ( returned Journeyman)

Don't think Berrigan was (a bench utility)

Not sure if King was in the last Test team before he jumped. (a Winger)



Thats Cherry picking of the top order





Do you regard having Two of the best English players in the NRL a problem?

Balanced with the 150 or so NRL has bins/never bins and others in SL?



Its hard to say if England get better crowd figures than the Kiwis because England have not figured in any Finals in Australia for how long?

Last year was the first year England have figured in a final in recent memory, the sad selection of Stadiums by the RLF for tournaments reflects their lack of confidence in drawing any sort of decent crowd to a Test match.

What was the final crowd? 31k pretty sad all round for a country that aspires to be a player at Test level.

Average crowd for the 4 nations series was around 16k, that is less than the NRL weekly average.



Good to see England can pick a Stadium and draw a crowd for a 4 nations Grand Final less than the AVERAGE crowd a Club team like the Broncos attract each week.