As ever , great read. I was interested to read your thoughts about the game down under and what changes they may or may not make to improve it depending on your point of view. Regrettably I think that the sorts of changes we hear about and discuss are really utterly irrelevant in the bigger picture. I put aside my prejudice a couple of weeks ago when invited to England v Aus at Twickers. The game was perhaps better than I anticipated because they at least attempted to throw the ball around. The execution was though poor. The atmosphere was fantastic , the beer was flowing and the great and the good were there in numbers. I spent a bit of time in the West Car park after the game with various VIP's including Jason Robinson a now very accomplished fully paid up country set member. When pushed by me he accepted that the game wasn't really as good as League ( OK he said League was simpler and he'd never really understood what the hell was happening in Union ) and that the England performance had been ordinary at best. BUT as he said , 2 hours after the end of the game there were still 20k people in Twickers and most of them had businesses or were influential in some way and were prepared to stand outside in the cold just because of the occasion. What was on the field was to some degree secondary and the big thing was being there and the fact that it was on the World stage. That's why he went to RU , it's why Sam Burgess ( who most RU types think has no chance but broadcasters will now give him more air time than he and the whole England RL set up have had for 25 years ) who was also "around" left , they want to be on a bigger stage. So the rule tweaks that we all get excited about because we like them or we don't , in fact are , regrettably , probably irrelevant.
