England are screwed in the 4 nations. The Aussie game is so far in front it's not even funny.

Cool thread bro.

Worst game of the 3 origins. The intensity was not as high in this one. However, i take your point. And if you compare Matt Scott to James Graham, hmmm.

Not a new thing. We'll always be behind as league is such a minority sport in this country. In Australia they can get the premium athletes in the schools. League is a realistic career path for them. Over here we do produce players like Greg Inglis and Paul Gallen and Darren Lockyer, only they don't ever play league. Unless they come from a very small geographical area and have some family lead into the sport they'll probably never even consider league. Until we resolve that we'll never get close. We will get the odd genuine talent, an Ellis, a Graham, a Burgess. But there will never be enough at the same time (30-40) to form a competitive squad.

There are higher quality super league games than todays Origin IMO

Gareth widdop half back at melbourne, woe a brit in a key position at a nrl club

If they pick enough NSW players we'll have a good chance! They were shocking!

One reason why it's that far behind is because you get the 'golden boys' over here, pampered, untouched, over-hyped, piggybacked etc.

Gallen was nothing special two years ago, in the same way Hayne was untouchable then and anonymous now. Some players just have purple patches.

But you're right, we are screwed. The real proof was St.George-Manly last week. Manly have been winning every week, but St George put them under such pressure and just wouldn't let them play. Manly suddenly looked a poor side, which they obviously aren't. SuperLeague's best might put on a good show against casual defenders and no hopers, but they can't cope with that intensity without making errors.

People need to learn the difference between "entertaining" and "quality".



Yes, the SL is fun to watch but thats because in general, the outside backs cant defend or read opposition attacking plays which leads to higher scores and nice looking tries. Now dont get me wrong, there are some average games over there and some average players. In general though the defensive capabilities across the board are better. This in turn makes the half backs better and the outside backs better because they have to work for their tries/good plays.



No team from the SL would get near the top 4 over there. I'd even go as far as saying every team would struggle to score against the Saints. Even the top Aussie teams struggle.



We DO have some very talented players over here though but what it all boils down to IMO is poor coaching. My case can be led by 2 clubs... Wigan and Huddersfield. Defensively they are better than everyone else (Hudds were until they played Wigan) and in Wigans case, they are the best team in the league. Huddersfield have come out of no where in the last 3 years and are now soundly a top 4 team. Also both these teams play with a structure in attack and not much of this "off the cuff" style which is nice when it works, but wont win you games against well drilled defensive teams (see Leeds). Now, what do both these teams have in common? Whats taken them from also rans to contenders/winners?..



A good coaching system that has come through the NRL. We could do a lot worse than to send some coaches over there to learn the techneques because until we do, the SL in general wont be able to compete with the NRL.

I have seen some pretty bland NRL games this year and some pretty goo ESL ones. SoO III was the least skillfull of the three games IMO and both teams lacked concentration in defense at times.

England just need to believe........and threads like this go some way to explaining why they often get tonked by the crims.......you have them beaten before a ball is kicked

TBF I thought about this same thing when watching the game. My honest thoughts were that we'd give NSW a decent game but QLD would have too much out wide for us to compete.