I was having this discussion with a friend at work yeasterday.

he thought that the standard this year has been a massive improvement. I disagree, From what I have seen the general standard has dropped or not improved. The odd team have come forward, but generally dont think we are improving or getting anywhere near to competing with NRL standards.

Eddie and stevo are always banging on about improving standard but I just dont see it.

Discuss.

I agree, i think the standard is falling. I dont think teams now are as good as they were 6/7/8 years ago.

And i think it will only get worse because of the SC. We will see a small decline as older Australian players are replaced with younger british ones. This will only be a short term decline and it will lead to a relative improvement in the future.

The bigger problem is the changes in the tax laws, the relative strength of the pound and Aussie dollar, and the likely increase in size and salary cap of the NRL along with the stagnation of the SL salary cap will lead to fewer top quality overseas players coming over. We will see more Brett Delany, Rhys Lovegrove type players, and fewer Ali Lauitiiti, and Brent Webb standard players.

Personally i think it is integral to the game that we look at the SC and make sure we can still attract elite athletes and elite players.

not for leeds no

Again?

Here's an off-the-wall idea...

The RFL set not only the salary cap for each club but also a cap for each player, every SL first team squad player would be paid the same amount.

Then,

Set the prize money for each competition at a rate where the players earnings could be doubled or trebled in a good year, and have the prize money for each competition solely for the players, so if the challenge cup is worth £250,000 to the winning team then that is split 17 ways between the squad picked for that game. Super league itself would have prize money allocated to the regular rounds finishing positions and then additional prize money for the play-offs, all of this would be handed to the players.

And an open invitation to any foreign player who thought he could play under those conditions.

The standard of super league hasn't improved this year. Some teams have maintained their status/quality whilst some others have slightly improved putting them on a more even playing field.

The NRL and rugby league in Australia and New Zealand are national sports and their coaching and player preparation is targeted as such. Hundreds of thousands of pounds is thrown in to the sport above what gets spent over here on professional and grass roots rugby which means there will always be a void in quality between northern and southern hemisphere.

Wow, that has to be the worst idea I have read on these forums for a while. I'm surprised at you

I don't think it has drastically changed either way. People are thinking too much into it.

I think its a winner.

The only thing it doesn't have is cake.

But we can factor that in later, as a tempter.

They could get a French fancy for every point they scored. Bonus

The standard of the SL sides in our competition is evening out no doubt

But sadly the standard is being watered down and not improving i'm afraid

We are still a million miles away from the standard of the NRL, Nothing much has changed since 1982 then there?

Too many average overseas players in our competition are restricting our junior development across all clubs, the only way we can improve this is to have a limit of 3 overseas players per club maximum, by this i mean that only 3 players are allowed at each club that cannot play for England/GB via any residency or ancestry loopholes or any other loopholes for that matter that our clubs chairmen seem only too keen to exploit

I'm encouraged by clubs such as Cas who are clearly giving it's junior talent a go in SL, would these players have got a go under the relegation system or would they have gone for the safe option of an NRL player that wasn't guaranteed a slot over there?

We often do well well against the Aussie's at schoolboy or academy levels but sadly these lads that serve us so well at this level are restricted in their pathway to first team footy by average overseas players that they are then caught up or even easily over-taken by the Nrl clubs willingness to give these kids a shot at first grade

The only issue there is that you can't restrict trade by limiting the number of overseas players a club is allowed to employ.

One potential idea to get around this, and I think it's used it Football and RU, is to limit the number that can play on matchday, but not the number that can be employed by the club. Now if you limit the number who can play to say 3 in the 17, then 14 have to be "Home Nations" qualified and we are getting somewhere.