Hmm, you may be right in way.



I look forward to bringing this thread up should you break your duck this year.

I'm not ignoring anything, last season I watched *most* games that were on TV, with a few exceptions - however this season I've found myself bored when watching the majority. Usually found myself hitting the console half way through lot of the games so far. I just find this season is a stand out in terms of mediocrity.



Maybe I should invest in a premier sports subscription...

I'm not saying they are bad Coaches, I'm saying the Style of Play may be different now?



Wigan = Shaun Wane (British)

St Helens = Keiron Cunningham (British)

Widnes = Denis Betts (British)

Castleford = Daryl Powell (British)

Leeds = Brian McDermott (British)

Wakefield = Chris Chester (British)

Hull FC = Lee Radford (British)

Huddersfield = Paul Anderson (British)

Salford = Ian Watson (British)



Hull KR = James Webster (Aussie)

Warrington = Tony Smith (Aussie)



Catalan = Laurent Frayssinous (French)

A lot of big lumbering forwards on that list.Maybe that could be a reason it has become so stale across the board?

Wouldn't surprise me at all. I think I've had a Eureka Moment!

There is no maybe about it but I'll warn you it makes watching SL even harder.



Newcastle are the only team of the sixteen so far I haven't got something out of watching. Add to that the Footy Show, Matty Johns Monday Night, Sterlo on the couch and even Backchat as a RL fan it makes you wish you were born an Aussie. Yes really.

It's already hard to watch currently so it's fine if it gets slightly harder, I can't find it much harder anyway as it currently is pushing me to switch the ruddy thing off!

The British game has been deteriorating for some time now which IMO is due to a number of factors.



Firstly there is an alarming lack of players with genuine class in our game and when we do produce one or two they depart to the NRL or Union. This is in part due to the gap between our out of date salary cap and the competition which is widening every year. Our administrators are hopeless at attracting serious money into the game and we are being left behind by Union and the NRL. We cannot compete for the best players in the world and we cannot produce them ourselves in sufficient quality and numbers. The public want to see class players and all we are getting is mediocre.



Secondly since the advent of the rule change that allows messing about at the PTB the advantage has swung to the side defending with slow ball for the attackers and time for defenses to get organised. When most clubs now have a "wrestle room" this highlights the emphasis on spoiling tactics and that the game has forgotten they are in the entertainment business.



Thirdly conditioners seem to be content to bulk players up to the extent that they lose pace. We lack genuinely quick players.



Fourth: we play too many games in England and the players are getting worn out and picking up more and more injuries.



Ironically the salary cap was introduced to prevent clubs overspending and going bust. In practice it hasn't prevented clubs from going bust and may well lead to more going under as the public and TV audiences stop watching because the product isn't good enough.



We need more classy stars in the English game and that means being able to match the terms offered elsewhere.

Ironically the removal of the salary cap would likely result in a poorer squad being assembled at arguably the best run club in SL.

Absolutely bang on the money - I've been saying the same thing for years and have just repeated myself (again) on our board, in defence of a forward who was being described as slow and lumbering and never finding his front; in reality, the whole game is becoming slow and lumbering, and due to the gang-tackling and organised interference that now plagues this modern iteration of RL, a quick ptb is pretty much a thing of the past.

It's ironic that the SL search for a quick play the ball has come at the expence of the integrity of the PTB which now unfortunately matches the integrity of RL scrums.

Ironically very little wrestling is now involved in wrestling because it makes it dull. Although the overall quality of the NRL is higher, I find a lot of that quite boring because it is just better wrestling and faster, more effective gang tackling for long periods, particularly early doors.