The NRL have announced they'll be investing 200 million dollars in development of the game there. From what I gather they seem also to be setting up a second tier national competition. That will presumably choke off player supply to SL and the British game. Teams like London Broncos will find it especially difficult. The RFL needs to be getting a proper longer term strategic plan up and running.

Wonder if they'll have one-up, one-down between NRL1 and NRL2?

There will never be a second tier competition in Australia. End of.

English RL will just have to invest more into junior development, that is actually a good thing.

That could actually be a good thing for SL and the international competition as it would force some clubs to promote youth rather than try and bring in kolpack stiffs from the NRL reserve grades.

The issue will be that it will push greater strength in the direction of clubs already churning out youngsters, it will simply intensify and existing process, look around SL and you'll see former Saints, Leeds and Wigan juniors holding down starts for other clubs when they couldn't hold down a bench spot at the club that developed them.

I think the main losers could be further down the chain in the semi-pro leagues, if the SL clubs are forced to make better use of their youngsters they won't discard them so quickly in favour of stiffs and you'll see less filtering down as quickly. Probably good for the overall player pool as it will mean more federation trained players in the fully pro league, but ambitious semi-pro teams may find it harder to get pro quality players.

London's problem is the lack of cash and relative bargaining power due to London weighting to recruit experienced players from up north, rather than the struggle for kolpack stiffs. We can produce SL players, look at LMS at Saints, Sarginson and Clubb at Wigan, Caro at Hull KR (and it will only be a matter of time till Dixon and Krasniqi and probably a couple of others end up going north), what we struggle with is getting a balanced squad. If anything come the end of the year when London get relegated there will be a lot of promising young London developed players with a fair amount of SL experience behind them, and that will benefit the clubs that pick them up, even if it never really benefited London because we lack the balance to make best use of what we've developed.

It would be great if that were the case but youth development costs a lot of money, is a long-term investment and has uncertain and irregular results for the clubs 9-18 in this new structure they simply wont prioritise youth development, where at the very young ages they need the coaching, or when they need blooding in to first grade because of their need for short-term results.

When your income and possibly survival and existence is dependent on where you finish, where are you putting your money, on a 16/17/18 year old who may or may not make it and who probably wont be ready for the regular first grade games for two or three years or a Luke Dyer/Jim Gannon/Michael Korkidas nrl reserve grade or below player?


There is a good chance that we will see the same amount of overseas players, just worse ones.

So, when the NRL announce they'll be spending $11 million to bring the NSW and Queensland Cups under the NRL banner to create a secon tier national competition they are lying?

After this season i see the 2 relegated teams stuck in the championship indefinately until the rules are tweaked in some form. The better trained full time SL players will be too strong for the championship part timers who are there because they arent good enough for SL or not developed enough. When the SL clubs realise this you'd like to think they'd continue with developing their youth but i suspect it will only be the top clubs who always finish in the top 8 who will have the nerve to do so.

Id also say, it isn’t necessary for us to see the NRL and its success as a threat, we should see it as an opportunity.

He said a "national" second tier comp. despite your self importance the last time I looked neither the nsw cup or the Intrust cup were national competitions nor are they full time professional leagues.

There's no real incentive for clubs to produce youth player. That's the start and end of it.

Youth development is expensive with no guarantees of success. Given the lack of money in the game, it's more prudent for clubs to look at kolpaks and the like rather than develop a young lad who then gets pinched by a bigger club for peanuts

If they were to have a second national competition surely it would have to be full time at some point?