i would scrap the international game because its a complete waste of time its not changed since i went to watch GB V AUS at boothferry park in 82 as a young lad give me more SL games anyday

Then we'll never compete with union and the player drain will grow.

I like so many have watched the Aussie dominance of the sport grow wider in recent years and for very good reasons. You can blame imported players or coaches but its down to numbers and we do not match them in key area's.



Australia is populated by 22.7 million people mainly concentrated around a few urbanised area's,The national sport is Rugby league and most Aussie lads want to play for there country and wear the green and gold. They have more teams attached to say Penrith Panthers then we have in the entire country and people can play at every level.



Our game is concentrated across the north of the country and very few players have been produced outside that area. The population of W & E Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and bits of Merseyside come to around 8 million or about a third the Aussies have. The Aussies RL do not have to compete with football who in this country take the vast majority of young men available. The Aussies do not have to compete with any other sport at all really as the media is right up on RL where as here its the other way around. We have union which is still hell bent on destroying us, down under they get the scraps left over or the over the hill who cross for a few extra pay days.



We can not expand as we are hemmed in and controlled by our bigger, richer and more powerful big brother who even today has got the services of one of our stars to parade out at one of the big events. Our game has been strangled at the base level through lack of investment, interest and will continue on much as it has done since its birth in 1895, It will survive, evolve and move on and we will support it, but its time we faced the harsh truth we not going to close the gap with the Aussies and we will struggle to keep up with the Kiwi's.



Is playing the Aussies actually doing our game overall more harm then good ?



Should we look to another format for internationals, perhaps at club level where we may be able to compete on a better level playing field.

That might actually help us on an international level as well. You can only get better by regularly competing against the best and learning from that experience. It needs to be given a proper go though rather than the usual knee jerk 'what a disaster, let's not do that again' reaction we usually get. As has been said, Origin wasn't popular at first. Look at it now.



I'm all for shorter seasons too. Less stress on the players bodies, injuries taking their toll on performances, general fatigue. Lets face it, it's a long bloody season to keep up the level of intensity that we'd all like to see week in, week out. I'd like to think fewer games would result in more quality games.

The Roses concept would give another 17 /20 players to look at . Also I'd like to see the Knights tour down under and play the Aussie and Kiwi u20's in test matches every 2 years with the knights then playing either of those at home .

The French would benefit by having regular games against the knights or a touring u20's rep side.

RL is not the national sport in Australia Ian, Aussie Rules is.



The big difference is there total focus on winning, in the UK it's enough to take part and be a plucky loser, it's why complete failiures like Henman are still "sporting heros".

It might not be their national sport, but it enjoys a much higher profile than it does here. Many thousands more people play the game at all levels in Aus, meaning that they have a much broader base of talent to choose from.

indeed, but there are also other factors to take into account, like their climate etc.



people have been arguing this for years, when it comes to sport the Aussies are just better at it than we are (on the whole)

Not really. We are better than them at football. We just panned them in the Ashes. We are better at a number of olympic events. To say they are 'better at sport' is inaccurate and simplistic. Hell, we've even won an RU world cup more recently than them.

How do you explain NZ's RL team then?

I think they're in a slightly different position in that most of their players play in the top club competition in the world. I think a lot of South Sea Islanders qualify for them, too, though I don't know how many are selected in practice. That said, they don't have the same depth that Australia have. Although their top 17 players have, in the past, managed to win big games against Australia, they don't have the same number of quality replacements that Australia have in the event of injury.

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From Wiki:



Australia:

- In 2008, a total of 423,584 Australians participated in rugby league. Junior league registrations have grown climb from 79,000 in 1999 to 120,667 in 2008.



England/UK is one of a number of sports vying for (distant) second place to Association football in the nation's affection. The MORI Sports Tracker consistently reports that rugby league interests around 15% of British adults. It was the fourth most popular team sport in the February 2005 list behind football, cricket and rugby union; 12% of British adults watched it regularly.



- In 2004 the Rugby Football League reported 62,463 registered players (this is a UK-wide figure). However in 2008, the RFL noted that there were only 2,000 registered club players aged 30 or over.