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Probably not. It's not impossible for Canada to become good but the Wolfpack and the Aces need to become serious catalysts in the growth of the game. Canada got left behind in basketball but a decent amount of Canadians have become good college basketball and NBA players in recent years. The Toronto area has become a hotbed in particular due to the Raptors and Vince Carter becoming an icon for them. 85% of the good prospects in recent years have come from the Golden Horseshoe, about 10% from Montreal and 5% from Vancouver. That's with a team that became a mainstream big deal in its biggest city, a star who went mainstream and a sport/league which is one of the richest and exposed in the world. And they're still not making headway, even with those advantages. They'll likely miss out on the Olympics. I know Rugby League is a smaller sport, the bar isn't as high etc. but when you play Australia, you're playing the equivalent of the NFL for the East Coast of Australia. It's the best athletes with the best coordination. That is something that takes generations to bridge, not 20 years, especially when you have no resources and are working with castoffs.

Haven't been on the forum for a few weeks, might not be back for a few more after reading this.

Hopefully less issues this time.

As Paula Abdul once sang, "two steps forward, two steps back"

From knowing people who've struggled with this, non-dependent alcoholism, the one thing that I've heard time and again is that you can't negotiate with alcohol. If it's not causing serious issues, you may be fine but if you're blacking out, I'd come off it.

The NFL and professional sports in general in the US represent a much smaller percentage of GDP than professional sport in pretty much any developed country in the world. They are massively overcompensated for TV coverage. If you want to expand the game, you need to open it and expand semi-professionalism. Create a genuine capitalist sporting society, not close it like the National Football League's crony capitalist model. Take autonomous, independent, professional Rugby League to every town that wants it and can support it.

Honestly, it has been a pretty bad decade and I honestly hope the next decade improves, though I feel it's far more likely to get much worse for the world in general. I will sit down and write something detail but probably keep it to myself. Unfortunately one of the lessons I learned this decade was that people will use things you've written semi-anonymously on public forums against you. Personally, I finally feel I am on the right track. I finally feel people took me seriously. I finally asked for help. I've lost a lot of people in this decade, lost a lot of sham friends, gained a couple of real ones. I have a hot meal in my tummy and I'm going home to a warm place. In that regard, I'm one of the lucky ones. But the degeneration of the world at large and people's defence of it weigh heavy though. To quote Charles Bradley, who rose to fame and fatally-succumbed to cancer in this decade, this World is going up in flames and nobody wanna take the blame.

Given the limitations you had to work with, I wouldn't beat yourself up. You more than did your bit, not sure who could've made the StormIcanes work long term. We subsequently found out all sorts of stuff which meant that club was unsustainable.

The Gorillas are still around I think.

I've seen some bad stuff and some teams are spiteful but that's next level.

Not off topic, Nate. I doubt those numbers exist. There are enclaves of Britishness across Spain. In Madrid, they have FC Britanico and Madrid Barbarians, which are the English-speaking football and rugby clubs. You'd expect some expat action down on the coasts and but I think it's a coincidence that the two biggest autonomous communities for Brits are the same for Rugby League.

Do you know if there's a course or an exam that might make my CV pop?

I'm struggling at the moment with this. Thought I could change careers but something has come up which will stop me from getting into that industry now. I can't get a job as an IT BA right now (Brexit hiring freezes in the UK, my Spanish isn't good enough for Spain plus nobody knows what they'll do with us Brits in less than a month), changing career was my ticket. I genuinely don't know what to do with my life. Sadly, my business takes up loads of time but doesn't bring home the bacon.

Game has been moved to an athletics stadium in Xativa, which is home of the Xativa Roosters. Over on the AERL Facebook page, I said it made no sense to hold it near Jaen to begin with. Torredonjimeno is a small, inconsequential town near one of the smaller, inconsequential provincial capitals. However, and maybe this is coincidence, the regional delegate for Jaen is the president of Asociación de Rugby League de Andalucía. As I said back in May 2017, ARLA split off from the "national" (read Valencian) setup to get their own thing going and there hasn't been a game played in Andalusia in over 2 years. Things have stalled, still no fixtures announced. Maybe I'm seeing things that aren't there but it seems to me that they found this stadium and convinced the national committee that this would help them launch and reboot ARLA. This wouldn't be such a concern if Custodians Madrid hadn't complained that they weren't allowed to host an international game, eventhough they were trying to do exactly the same thing 18 months ago. I think we're at a point where you can say there's an international coach and players who'd play for the team but, for all intents and purposes, the game is gone in Spain.

She's genuinely dreadful, I've no idea how she's on TV. I can only assume cronyism or nepotism. Or she got her job by convincing her half-sister to put out.