WN83

Union-No idea. I don't really care who wins and don't have a clue who are favourites. I do know Andy Farrell is a great leader, so total guess of 2-1 to the Lions. Rugby League-I think we'll shock a few with how competitive we'll be. I expect the Aussies to take the series but they won't have it all their own way. I'll go 2-1 to the Aussies Cricket-It's so difficult to know what to expect from this England team from game to game, let alone in an Ashes down under. Stokes needs to stop being so pig headed with the tosses and team selection if we're to win. Guys like Crawley, Pope and Bashir aren't consistent enough/good enough. If we get selection right, I'll go with a 2-2 draw. It's extremely tough to win in Oz and that would be a positive result.

England's approach probably isn't always the most sensible but it looks to be playing with the oppositions heads at least. Why India are still batting is beyond me but they're clearly nervous of England going for this huge total.....oh they finally declare as I type. Not before time.

There's such a lack of players available to sign knocking around at the minute, even more so with homegrown players but it feels like there will have been a couple of chances to get non quota, back up forwards in this past 12-18 months. I always feel like you can probably get away with a bit of inexperience in your fringe backs but not so much with forwards. You need those 2 or 3 options sitting outside your 17 to come in, when inevitable injuries hit. I'd back a coach usually and say that the club may not be prepared to stump up for those experienced squad based players you need but I'm still scarred from Lammy playing a junior pack at Wigan, week in, week out, when he had more experienced lads he could put in (even if they weren't particularly good). I think you might get cheered up tonight though. I predicted a win by 4 for us but that is more in hope than expectation. I just think Leigh will want it more tonight, which looks to be the case with most sides at the minute.

I'm a right mardy when things aren't going well and usually just turn it off but I love watching Brook and Smith bat, so left the tv on at 85/5 or whatever it was. Glad I did now, they've been exceptional! If the Indians don't win this game from that position they were in, they'll be wondering how they can get one on the board. Plenty of work for England to do yet though.

I look at Leigh and HKR around the time of that challenge cup final between the clubs and there wasn't much between the clubs and obviously Leigh won the game. I think a major difference since has been the quality of squad filler signings. Leigh have signed a few kids from Wigan, who were nowhere near ready for the first team and a few punts from the Championship and HKR have gone and brought in Broadbent, Richardson, Doro, Brown, Booth, Kershaw, Leyland etc. There hasn't been a great deal of difference between the signings to go in to the first 17 IMO and if Leigh can get that quality of squad depth sorted out, they can really kick on.

He at least seemed to suggest it before he actually came over. You then get Luke Keary coming here, taking the money, putting in horrendous performances and then claim the leagues a dreadful standard and unwatchable! Nowt like cheek!! I really think the clubs as a whole need to make a concerted effort to avoid guys making noise before they come that it's some sort of fall back option.

It sounds like a bit of a 'come and get me' plea. He does sign it off saying he thinks he can play good rugby, be that in the NRL or Superleague and I do think he ends up at Saints but I'd be wary of his motives and his comments throughout the speculation, if I were Saints. They had Waqa Blake come here and pretty much admit it would always be his last resort. They then got Feldt, who turned it down and didn't fancy it and then changed his mind and now this.

He's a solid Superleague player Hadley and is having a bit of an Indian summer but I just don't think there's enough dynamism there. He seems a top pro and a grafter but you need more at International level. There's no shame in that and to have pushed himself in to the conversation shows how far he's come and how well he is playing.

He'll defend on that right hand side, so will come up against your left hand side. He had a really tough game defensively against Huddersfield and Greenwood in particular and I think you have Halton on that side, so it could be a tough night for the kid. I'm hoping that was one off day against Huddersfield because in other games he's defended far better than that and was excellent at Leeds earlier in the season. Wigan switched Nsemba and Farrell around at Cas and it sounds they'll stay in those spots, so Nsemba will defend alongside Farrimond on the right hand side. He will need to ensure he's switched on and giving him as much protection as possible. As for the game, I had Leigh quite comfortably until I heard Mulhern was out and Armstrong also likely to be missing. I now think it'll be close and we might just edge it. It won't be by many though given how poor our form is. Wigan by 4

We're likely to be about the same as that top end, with Mike McMeekan and Bateman being 31. I think Daryl Clark will also be selected and he would be the oldest in that case at 32.

Firstly, you'd have to say they're not in, so we haven't gone towards that yet but there is room for some experience in any squad. I think there is half an eye on the future at the minute via guys like Robertson, Delaney, Trout etc and our team is likely to be quite young, with experience coming from guys like Williams, Knowles and the like (Bateman will be another but I'm putting it in brackets because I know loads wouldn't have him in). I'd possibly pick Walmsley if his form holds up but I don't think Watkins and Hadley are in the conversation tbh because I think there's enough comparable quality, who are younger in that second row position (or even at prop/loose forward if you put them in their second positions).

I said the other day I'd wait until after some comments from either to give a real opinion of what is going on. I'll admit after reading that yesterday that I do now sit in the camp that says Wane is being stubborn with it and those were excuses yesterday, rather than coming out with what I think is the honest answer and that is that he doesn't like Connor as a character. You just can't use consistency of play as a reason for not picking a player, when that player has been one of the most consistent across the whole league and you're picking lads who haven't been. It's always a balancing act with how much you give away as a coach, especially when picking players for internationals but he'd be better served just batting it away and saying he's putting faith in the options in the squad.

It's been such a weird season for him. Some fantastic performances and some that had Saints fans calling him not fit to burn. I'd have him in though come the Ashes, if he's playing well. I also think with guys like Walmsley and Percival (and before now, Lomax) there's a bit of left overs from Woolfs time at Saints, where he'd use mid season England games as rest weeks. Wane loves a guy like Welsby, who'd want to play as much against Greece, as he would an Ashes test but it's no good some players only finding the hunger to represent England now an Ashes is here. It's a bit like heritage players throwing their hands up now verses a guy like Radley, who has turned up busted to play against anybody these last few years.

Unless the clubs are forced to accept decisions/changes IMG want to make, they may as well rip it all up. If clubs were cooperating from day one and things weren't going well, I'd be the first to say we have to give it time but they just haven't and characters in power within the game won't do it going forward, so they make it absolutely pointless.

Totally agree. What do they want? what is their appetite for more games each week? how many broadcasters are interested in taking games? what sort of offers are we looking at? Just going to 14 teams, plugging gaps short term by giving no central funding to a couple of teams and hoping everything sorts itself out is very Rugby League but we can't go down that route or else we'll be back here in a couple of years, talking yet again about changing the structure of the league. In terms of the future, what is happening with the NRL getting involved? that seems to have gone very quiet and presumably the presence of Big Nige has killed that? If that is the case, the guy best have some miracles up his sleeve.

Those clubs aren't in the English Premiership though are they? Genuine question, I pay as little attention to it as possible. Looking at some loose numbers on google, it had participants in league in England as 55k and Union just in England at 240k. Their new TV deal for the Premiership only is worth £40m a year, compared to ours at £20m a year. They then have a 10 team top division and we're talking of 14 teams. I don't see how we sustain that without it being substandard, without a long term plan, that isn't just go to 14 teams asap and hope a couple don't want any central funding IMO.

How many people play Union in England compared to League? It's obviously more but numbers of Google seem all over the shop. I know nothing of the game but again searching on Google, I can see they have a 10 team top league. Looking at some results, they look to have Newcastle as the sole whipping boy, so in the main every game looks to be competitive (even if it's dross). Now I know they've had financial issues as well but most of that is due to over spending, rather than due to crowds dwindling, TV deals going down etc. We're looking to go to 14 teams, with far less potential to bring players through in to the clubs over a prolonged period. It just doesn't stack up for me and I don't see how long term it continues to work unless you get more people playing the game at grassroots.

I suppose a Wigan fan and a Bradford fan are likely to have quite different views on going to 14 teams, staying with 12, reducing the amount of teams etc. Obviously I'm sat here in a position of safety, knowing we'll be in the league, even if it was cut to 10 (which it won't be btw) but I just can't see the quality being there for 14 teams and going to that could do more harm than good. I get your point that you will always have good teams and bad teams in any league but the level London and Cas were at last year was horrendous and was leading to walk overs every single week. That is no good for the game, especially when some are being broadcast on National TV. I can only see a move to 14 teams leaving us with 3 or 4 sides of that level, so that means that some weeks, we'll likely see 3 or 4 out of the 7 fixtures being walk overs, that will likely see many change channel. I know I just turn games off when they blow out and having more of them just isn't appealing. In an ideal world, there would be enough money in the game to stay at 12 teams and to ditch loop fixtures but we're not there. A top division of 10, with an extremely strong Championship and a set date of teams putting in bids to join the tip division would get my vote ahead of going to 14. As I say, we won't go to 10 anyway, so it's a bit pointless me even discussing it. If we're going to 14 then the best case is that it happens in 2027 and not next year IMO.

There aren't enough good players knocking around to ensure we have 12 reasonably competitive teams in Superleague currently, so I don't know how we go to 14. Increasing quotas will only help so much. I don't like the loop fixtures but I'd rather play Leigh and Warrington 3 times, than see us pump Oldham or York by 60/70 points (in saying that, they'd probably beat us at the minute). I'd stay with 12 in 2026 and look to make any changes from 2027, which would at least give some breathing space for some actual planning. It wouldn't go down well with many but I think we'd actually be better going backwards and going down to a 10 team Superleague in the shorter term of the next 2 to 3 years. If we did that, we could then look at a model a bit like the NRL are doing with expansion clubs, of giving out places a couple of years in advance and allowing those clubs to plan properly for an entrance to Superleague. It would take maybe 6 or 7 years to get up to 14 clubs then and there would be some pain in between in terms of loop fixtures and maybe bye rounds but longer term, I think we would find the league in much better health overall.

I volunteer Adrian Morley as the next opponent for Boris.

Yeah, they won't need much. It just surprises me that even at Origin level, which they clearly value above anything else, they don't mind having coaching novices in charge. The game and fans here wouldn't like it but maybe they're right and if players are the best of the best, they don't need a tactical genius and instead they just need somebody who is well respected with the players. Ideally you'd want both and maybe Smith will be that.

It's funny how things are done and seemingly accepted in Oz compared to here and how we can view those moves, compared to how we'd view them here. Cameron Smith was a great player and a great captain but has no top level coaching experience. If we appointed a guy like that, people would be up in arms. I'm trying to think of an equivalent here and I'm probably coming up with somebody like Paul Sculthrope or James Graham. He could be a genius but I'd rather have an experienced coach like ours going in to an Ashes series.

Ian Blease and Jon Wilkin were both asking the same question during the On The Bench podcast and they seem to think not. I agree with the calls for the international pathways to be worked on and things like Academy tours for our lads to be brought back. One thing I would say they missed though was them saying they want our young players to have the experience of playing and beating the Aussies when they're kids (as though none of them currently have that). They didn't mention it but we do have that with many of this current crop. Welsby, Newman, Smith, Trout, Havard, Holroyd, Smithies, McDonnell, Walters, Wilson etc have beaten an Aussie schoolboys team and they did it 2-0. It's the next generation of Nsemba, Robertson etc that haven't been given the chance.

Or more in keeping with Wanes history as a coach-a Ben Flower I think we'll go pretty well in the series tbh. I expect us to be far more desperate for the wins and I think we've got plenty of quality about us. I doubt we win the series but I think we'll take a game and push them in the others (it's the tradition).

Imagine Fittler having to bother working out who the England players were. No wonder he pulled out!