AB90

All fair points. I'm just conscious that beating the Aussies may not be the holy grail for RL in Britain that it is made out to be. And I don't believe the sucess/failures of the national team are correlated to the success/failures of British rugby league. Imo. We only play the Aussies on average once every 2 years. And half of those games will be played at 7am in the morning. It just seems foolish to be to put all our eggs in this basket when we have close to 200 SL games every season on our doorstep. IMO it's a no brainer that this should be the priority. In football, Scotland on the international scale are a poor team. I bet they would love to beat England on a regular basis but they don't and never will (due to playing numbers, money etc). But that doesn't mean Scottish football is poor. They have a thriving domestic competition in the Scotish Premiership. The success of the league and the sport in Scotland is dependent on the domestic competition and not international results.

I find this view a little bit to simplistic. The fact that to some people the only measure of success of rugby league in the UK is solely dependent on beating the Aussies. SL accounts for 95% of our RL calendar which should be a priority over anything. That's how it is with the nrl. On average we only play the Aussies once every 2 years.

My suggestion was a generalisation regarding salary caps, not specific to SL.

For salary cap to properly work it should have a minimum spend requirement. That would solve a lot of our problems if every club had to spend let's say 95% of the cap or be fined for breaching if they fall below (like when going above the cap).

Bigger playing pool there the top athletes. But what does really help from a size perspective is having a high population of Pacific Islanders in Aus and NZ.

GC do look poor. Will take a couple of seasons to get them in the 8. To be fair, they do have a lot of dead wood coming off contract like Kevin Procter, Nathan Peates, Anthony Don, Dale Copley, Tyrone Robert's. Plus Kallum Watkins and Jai Arrow gone. They should be able to have a clean slate next year. As Gold Coast isn't that attractive for players they should definitely do a Canberra and look to England. Surely Hollbrook has considered that!

Pretty sure his grandfather played for the Kangaroos. Was part of the St George dynasty. But could be born here

100%. The NRL is one of closest sporting competition in the world. In 2018 Parramatta and Manly were last and second last respectively. They finished 5th and 6th in 2019. There both now rated as one of the contenders for 2020. Fyi - a Bulldogs foward pack of Dylan Napa, Luke Thompson, Josh Jackson, John Bateman, Raymond Faitala Mariner, Adam Elliot etc would be pretty handy in my opinion.

Agreed. It's fair to say the Aussies could do a lot more for the international game. But it's not Australia's fault that France, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are terrible. Whilst in the the southern hemisphere Tonga, Fiji, Samoa and PNG are all closing the gap on the big 3 at incredible speeds.

I just think it gives to much power to the player (not so much the GI case but retiring and returning in general). Using the Daryl Clark example, I imagine Warringtons blessing would be along the lines of 'you can go but we require a substantial fee from your new nrl club'. Nrl clubs says no fee. Warrington says to Daryl Clark that you can't leave/break your contract early without us being compensated so decline to release him. Daryl Clark announces his 'retirement' and is now a free agent able to sign where he pleases.

I guess if the deal is for the 2021 season and thereby his Souths contract would if expired anyway had he played on. It probably does change. I just think if the shoe was on the other foot and let's say Daryl Clarke wanted to go the NRL now but was locked in a desl with Warrington for a further 3 years. Can he just 'retire' and then sign for an nrl club? I doubt it.

One of the few negatives of the nrl. If he stayed in England he potentially would of made his super league debut at 17 and had 50 or so first grade games under his belt already. Broncos at full strength probably means another year in the qld cup. Which is still great for development.

Retiring and returning gets a bit cloudy with the salary cap and potentially open a can of worms. 'Retiring' is an easy way to get out of a contract and sign with another team.

That's negative of a draft system - agreed. Do you want to discuss and consider the potential positives? Like evening out the playing field in access to junior talent, evening out the competition, centralised funding for juniors, increased media attention, reducing club expenditure (no academies)

If thats what you take away from that, so be it. Pros and cons in all systems and ideas. You are probably correct in suggesting that this may be a 'con' of having a draft system. The question is, do the positives outweigh the negatives.