Re: SL standards plummeting : Sat Jun 09, 2012 3:28 pm  

McClennan wrote: Do keep up old boy Oh how embarrassing, 20 years old and I have lost my 'street'.

McClennan wrote: Do keep up old boy Oh how embarrassing, 20 years old and I have lost my 'street'.

Re: SL standards plummeting : Sat Jun 09, 2012 4:23 pm  

P-J wrote:

Oh well then. Let's not even bother turning up next time.

Why would you say that? All I'm saying is that you can tinker with those issues all you like but it's not helpful to state that it's the reason why we're losing when I distinctly remember us losing to the Australians before those tactics came to the fore.

[Bullseye]

Re: SL standards plummeting : Sat Jun 09, 2012 5:43 pm  

McClennan wrote:

Why would you say that? All I'm saying is that you can tinker with those issues all you like but it's not helpful to state that it's the reason why we're losing when I distinctly remember us losing to the Australians before those tactics came to the fore.

Quite right. We need to get more people playing the game over here then we'll have more top quality players making it. That's what happened in Australia in the 70s to put them ahead of us and is the reason they've never been surpassed.

BTW that Bulls side managed to beat Saints a few weeks back

Re: SL standards plummeting : Sat Jun 09, 2012 6:02 pm  

When your own teams fortunes aren't looking too good. It's quite often that one think's the standard of the comp is diminishing. Funnily enough I felt the competition waned somewhat between 2003 - 2009. Yet strangely enough from 2010 onward's I've never felt the need to question the quality of the league.

Re: SL standards plummeting : Sat Jun 09, 2012 9:52 pm  

P-J wrote:

The 'scootathon' rugby mentality was the reason we were getting smashed by the Aussies/Kiwis. All we were doing is producing scooting hookers. The hope is that now we start producing hookers and 3/4s that can actual control a game without relying on getting 10 cheap metres by running from dummy half every play.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but during the period between the inception of SL and around 2008, when the quick PTB rules and wider defensive lines were changed, British RL managed to develop some great halfbacks like Long & Deacon, who had all the skills.

I think your recollection of that period is skewed for some reason. Yes, Saints exploited the gaps from DH (I'd say revolutionised DH play in the UK) and were always waiting for that player slow to get back into defence, but our gameplan was much more varied than that, and few other teams consistently utilised the DH to any great effect.

I reckon because Saints had the standout hooker of the SL era in Cunningham (backed up first by Higham, then by Roby), quite a bit resentment built up amongst other fans for the Saints style.

Re: SL standards plummeting : Sat Jun 09, 2012 11:49 pm  

Not for the first time this season, a really ordinary Saints team put a lot of points past the opposition without getting out of second gear.

The standard of the league as a spectacle has never been lower. It's slow, ponderous and more or less every try is a flop over. I'm generally an optimist about the state of RL but we are in big trouble if we don't take steps to make the game entertaining again. I was counting down the minutes til I could get out of that game last night so God knows what the casual fans/newcomers would think.

Re: SL standards plummeting : Sun Jun 10, 2012 12:25 am  

LovesToSpooge wrote:

When your own teams fortunes aren't looking too good. It's quite often that one think's the standard of the comp is diminishing. Funnily enough I felt the competition waned somewhat between 2003 - 2009. Yet strangely enough from 2010 onward's I've never felt the need to question the quality of the league.

You're absolutely right. Standards in SL are so monumentally high right now that the "biggest club in SL" currently sitting at the top of the league are apparently having to enter a bidding war for either Matty Smith and/or Gaskell as the best possible available players to fill their #6 and #7 jerseys next season. That says everything about the immense depth of talent around playing the game right now, eh?

Re: SL standards plummeting : Sun Jun 10, 2012 7:09 am  

Sorry but it's been 30+ years since we won a tournement against Oz. There have been a mix of styles and numbers of teams in the league in that time.

A reduction of SL teams IMHO is very short term and will lead to no increase in the standard of player. It will simply redistribute the current standard of player through a narrower selection of clubs.

But please someone volunteer to exit Saints from the league and I will take this arguement seriously. It's a money grab exersize plain and simple. Same as any walk of life where there are limited resources some members of society will resort to theiving to take more than the share they are entitled to. The big teams are now seeing that they can't buy up all the talent, eg in years gone by we would never have had Castleford competing with Saints to keep Edmondson. The bigger teams don't like this as they are having to make better recruitment choices rather than just having the natural advantage of more spending power.

The natural result of less in the competition will be less teams producing players to play in the competition. The quota system has only been refitted in the last 5 years and it's now impacting. But even now we still have players under the old system as Manu shows they will not be cleared out of the system for sometime yet.

In 2007 we had 12 teams, we did not beat the Austrailians and we still managed to nil Hull KR 40- 0. Beat Huddersfield 54 - 4. London 44- 6. A reduction in teams did not stop oned sided battles because they are part of sport when one team turns up underdone and the other team is ready for a battle royale.

That same team we hammered mid season, where good enough to beat us earlier on in the year, just as in 2007 London beat us earlier on in the league 14- 6.

Increasing the quality of the competition cannot be done with a quick fix, as you are talking about a turnover of 420 players. In 5 years we have not yet cleared out all quota players, it's taken 10 years of the cap and not every club is at full spend yet. So when you start seeing those time scales you will see how long it will take to increase standards across the board of homegrown talent, rather than clubs using the old method of short term fixes to nip abroad and drag anyone in under what ever loop hole they could find. As we saw the nipping abroad may have filled holes in your club side but did nothing for team GB or England in the last 30 years.

I would also say the team GB(england) struggles as it lags behind the domestic competition. A good example of this is Leeds having so many in the exiles match coming up where as Warrington have so few. Yes Leeds where champions last year but they did finish 5th. They had lost twice as many games as the league leaders over the course of the season.

I think the playoffs are great in terms of spinning out money and interest for other clubs, but as a measure of a team it is a poor measure. It requires 3 to 4 games as opposed to a whole season. Even the Aussies don't use the playoffs to pick their side. The make their picks based on season form, to pick for SOO, which then narrows down the national side.

Re: SL standards plummeting : Sun Jun 10, 2012 7:30 am  

bewareshadows wrote:

Sorry but it's been 30+ years since we won a tournement against Oz. There have been a mix of styles and numbers of teams in the league in that time.

A reduction of SL teams IMHO is very short term and will lead to no increase in the standard of player. It will simply redistribute the current standard of player through a narrower selection of clubs.

But please someone volunteer to exit Saints from the league and I will take this arguement seriously. It's a money grab exersize plain and simple. Same as any walk of life where there are limited resources some members of society will resort to theiving to take more than the share they are entitled to. The big teams are now seeing that they can't buy up all the talent, eg in years gone by we would never have had Castleford competing with Saints to keep Edmondson. The bigger teams don't like this as they are having to make better recruitment choices rather than just having the natural advantage of more spending power.

The natural result of less in the competition will be less teams producing players to play in the competition. The quota system has only been refitted in the last 5 years and it's now impacting. But even now we still have players under the old system as Manu shows they will not be cleared out of the system for sometime yet.

In 2007 we had 12 teams, we did not beat the Austrailians and we still managed to nil Hull KR 40- 0. Beat Huddersfield 54 - 4. London 44- 6. A reduction in teams did not stop oned sided battles because they are part of sport when one team turns up underdone and the other team is ready for a battle royale.

That same team we hammered mid season, where good enough to beat us earlier on in the year, just as in 2007 London beat us earlier on in the league 14- 6.

Increasing the quality of the competition cannot be done with a quick fix, as you are talking about a turnover of 420 players. In 5 years we have not yet cleared out all quota players, it's taken 10 years of the cap and not every club is at full spend yet. So when you start seeing those time scales you will see how long it will take to increase standards across the board of homegrown talent, rather than clubs using the old method of short term fixes to nip abroad and drag anyone in under what ever loop hole they could find. As we saw the nipping abroad may have filled holes in your club side but did nothing for team GB or England in the last 30 years.

I would also say the team GB(england) struggles as it lags behind the domestic competition. A good example of this is Leeds having so many in the exiles match coming up where as Warrington have so few. Yes Leeds where champions last year but they did finish 5th. They had lost twice as many games as the league leaders over the course of the season.

I think the playoffs are great in terms of spinning out money and interest for other clubs, but as a measure of a team it is a poor measure. It requires 3 to 4 games as opposed to a whole season. Even the Aussies don't use the playoffs to pick their side. The make their picks based on season form, to pick for SOO, which then narrows down the national side.

The rfl should do a investigation to see why the standard had dropped, what's the reasons and why we can't compete with the Aussies.

The are many aspects to look at, like the number of teams in super league, the salary cap, the license system, problems at grass roots(even schools), the overseas reduction in quota players, losing players to NRL and union, no promotion or relegation.

All the above could be the problem or may e we just ain't good enough, it could be just that simple.

[Sadfish]

Re: SL standards plummeting : Sun Jun 10, 2012 8:03 am  

Maybe its more deep rooted, in the 4 big sports, England or GB have only ever won 1 of each of the world cups and in cricket they've not even done that.