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I imagine many of the top line players will withdraw and many on the field won't show up either. The French national team is one of the most frustrating teams to follow.

At the moment I'm not sure Hull can lay claim to having two top-level teams.

As Super League + is a bit pricey for me I quite enjoy watching games on iPlayer with a VPN. Unfortunately the only way of finding out what games are on iPlayer is to visit the Super League website, the BBC seems to list nothing other than previous streams.

Hull represent one of the problems with Super League - a team that is always dreadful and yet is good enough to avoid relegation each year.

I'm really tempted to get SL+, but at $30 per month or $163 per year it is quite a steep price, particularly given I already pay similar amounts for WatchNRL.

Still early days for Galvin, plus he will be suspended for the next few weeks due to a terrible hip drop tackle.

Does Oldham have any chance of getting back to former glories? Certainly still seems to be a good base of support there.

It will be interesting to see if the Vegas kickoff still dominates the Australian media cycle in five years time? Presumably the novelty might wear off? Or will it morph into a moving festival which the NRL auctions off to different venues around the world each year - London, Dubai, Singapore, Miami, etc?

The axing of the North Sydney Bears was a travesty. If it hadn't rained so much during 1999 the Central Coast stadium would have been completed on time and the Bears would have relocated most of their games to Gosford. Instead it rained cats and dogs all winter, the stadium was significantly delayed, and the Bears took on $4,000,000 of debt due to the delays. Sydney perhaps has too many teams, but North Sydney isn't one of them. Cronulla and St. George have a tiny footprint with little chance of growth, North Sydney had a bigger fan base than many of the teams that survived the cut.

Walsh has the potential to be very good for a long time. Much like Darren Lockyer, I could see him moving from fullback into the halves when he starts to slow down a bit and essentially have a second career. It is amazing the Broncos ever let Walsh go in the first place, they were very fortunate to get another chance to nab him - most clubs never get a chance to right such wrongs.

Why is Adelaide always so far down the list or not even on the list at all? The Rams averaged over 15,000 in the 1997 season. I get why Adelaide rates below Perth and New Zealand, but it seems odd that is basically never gets mentioned at all.

Australia has a regionalism in its sporting codes that is almost unprecedented anywhere else. Sure, in the USA you have regions where ice hockey or basketball are more popular, but ultimately America Football is the most popular sport everywhere and people are aware of the others. Australia is very odd that a sport can be completely dominant in one major center and then almost non-existent in another city only a few hours away by plane.

The WCC challenge will go the way of the dodo if it isn't part of the Las Vegas festivities. With NRL now planning on picking the Vegas teams well ahead of time (by May), if the NRL champions are ultimately one of the Las Vegas participants they will obviously not withdraw from the big money event to fly over to Wigan or St Helens instead.

The NRL Nines did ok in Auckland for awhile, that is until people realized that Nines isn't really all that entertaining.

I think a Magic Round could be successful in Auckland if priced right, but I don't see all the Australian teams agreeing to move it across the Tasman.