Welcome to the third edition of Six to go, looking at some of the things that have caught my eye over the last week or so in the great world of rugby league.

1. Burgess dropped
It looked likely to happen and it did. Young Wigan winger Joe Burgess was dropped for the Warriors’ Round 4 visit to Castleford Tigers after a series of high-profile errors in the opening weeks of the year, with his spot going to Dominic Manfredi.

Obviously, it made no difference to the Warriors as they were crushed 42-14 by the rampant Tigers.

It is usually British forwards who make a success of things in the NRL and our backs have not made an impact on the other side of the world since the likes of Garry Schofield, Ellery Hanley, Martin Offiah and Shaun Edwards – true British rugby league legends – were running around impressing our Antipodean friends 25 to 30 years ago.

It was going to be hard enough for the young man to gain a first-grade spot at the Sydney Roosters with the calibre of player they already have in their back line, but now he could find himself playing for the Warriors dual-registration partner Workington Town in the Championship less than 12 months before he moves across to the other side of the world.

Burgess is a player of undoubted ability. He scored 20 tries in 23 appearances in his first full Super League season in 2014 and earned a non-playing spot in England’s Four Nations squad at the end of the year. He has scored two Super League tries this year plus a brilliant, full-length effort in the World Club Series game against Brisbane Broncos. But his errors have cost his team tries against Widnes, Brisbane and, most recently, Hull KR.

He is by no means the finished article and he will get back into the Warriors side this year, but the Roosters will have a mountain of work to do to make him ready for the NRL.

2. Super League doesn’t mean the end
The general assumption is that most players leave the NRL and come to Super League on something of a downward curve in their career, looking to earn some major cash on the back of their reputation, or simply because they are not good enough to be a first-grade regular in the NRL anymore.

That is correct 95 per cent of the time, but some players come over here for the right reasons, improve their game and end up back in the big time.

Gavin Miller re-built his career at Hull Kingston Rovers in the mid-1980s and went home to become a World Cup winning Australian international, while Jamie Lyon came to St Helens as a major name, had two great years at the Saints, and went back to Manly Sea Eagles an even better player.

The latest player to buck the trend is Pat Richards. Richards made his name on the wing in the Wests Tigers 2005 premiership-winning side, scoring 20 tries in 28 appearances including a try in the grand final off that Benji Marshall pass.

He joined Wigan Warriors the following year at just 24 years of age, in the prime of his career. He struggled to assert himself or tie down a regular spot in 2006 and was dropped to reserve grade for a while as the Warriors struggled against relegation. From 2007 onwards he became an automatic choice and won many games for the Warriors with his wonderful goal-kicking and ability to pick high balls out of the air to score valuable tries.

He ended his Warriors’ career at the end of 2013 having won two Super League titles, two Challenge Cups and two League Leaders Shields, but even more importantly he had scored 167 tries (tied 10th in Super League history) and 899 goals (including 4 drop goals) in just 224 appearances for an individual points total of 2462. He holds the Wigan club record for points in a season with 462 in 2010.

He was 32 years of age when he returned to the NRL in 2014 for the Wests Tigers to score a respectable 9 tries in 20 games and kicked 54 from 63 goals.

He was brought back to my attention with his last-minute field goal to give the Tigers a Round 1 19-18 win over the Gold Coast Titans at the weekend. Some pundits mentioned that he would not look out of place in Origin – now that would be something at 33 years of age.

3. Farewell Roby
Super League match official Tim Roby announced that he and his partner were moving out to Australia after he was offered a position as a match official in the NRL.

Why they would want any of our officials is beyond me – surely they have enough Australian and New Zealand officials making errors as it is without bringing in a Pom who has sometimes ran around with the most ridiculous child-like looking beard I have seen.

Good luck Tim, you are probably one of the better ones – that’s not saying too much though.

4. Manly woes
You’ve got to feel sorry for fans of Manly Sea Eagles. Not only did they lose their opening game of the year against Parramatta Eels, but it has now been confirmed that star halfback Daly Cherry-Evans has signed a contract with the troubled Gold Coast Titans.

Cherry-Evans, who was off contract at the end of this year, has played all of his first grade rugby league with Manly, scoring 28 tries in just over 100 appearances. But you can’t blame him for taking the money that the Titans are throwing at him – said to be $1 million a year for four years – as it will certainly secure his family’s future. Whether he will get anywhere near winning a grand final with the Titans is another thing.

Now Manly’s other off-contract star, Kieran Foran, is reported to have signed an even bigger four-year $4.7 million dollar contract with Parramatta. Foran has also played all of his first grade career with the Sea Eagles and it must be galling for a club like Manly to lose such high-quality players on the back of the losses of club legends Glenn Stewart (Rabbitohs) and Anthony Watmough (Eels) at the end of 2014.

Cherry-Evans had a contract offer taken off the table by the club last week and also revealed that he had agreed to a new deal, in principle, with the old management team at the club last year. It appears that since the new management came in the club is falling apart.

It could be a long, hard year for the Sea Eagles and their fans.

5. Busy boy Nigel
Nigel Wood has had a hectic week. As the boss of Super League he has been setting out his seven-year plan to grow the sport and make England World Champions. As the Chairman of the Rugby League International Federation he introduced the organisation’s first CEO this week.

Wood revealed ambitious plans last week for the period up to 2021 and they included increasing the games turnover from £118 million to £146 million, increasing spectator numbers from 2.3 million to 3 million, with an increase of TV viewers from 17 million to 22 million per year. He also expects the total number of registered players to rise from the current 46,636 to 65,929. (I love how these player numbers are so specific, how do we know the exact number of people that will be playing the game in six years’ time?)

But his main objective, and the one that he has the least control over, is that he wants England to win the World Cup in 2017. Yes, just two years down the line and in Australia/New Zealand, he is expecting the England squad to achieve something we have not done since 1972 when the late, great Clive Sullivan went the full length down the wing in front of not many supporters somewhere in France.

Don’t get me wrong, I and a lot of people who read this want England to win the World Cup in 2017, but how will we do it? It is OK making it an aim or an objective, but you also have to put a plan in place of how to get to where you want to be.

Sounds simple, but we all know it’s not that easy and we don’t even know who the coach will be, as Wood admitted that no talks had taken place with incumbent Steve McNamara although he will definitely be in charge for the New Zealand series later in the year.

Earlier this week Wood introduced David Collier as the very first Chief Executive Officer of the RLIF. Collier has a wealth of experience in top-level sports administration, after spending 10 years as head of the England and Wales Cricket Board. He has also worked for the International Cricket Council and the International Hockey Federation, so he is a major catch for the game of rugby league.

His brief is to expand the game worldwide and with more new countries recently gaining membership status with the RLIF, including Serbia and Spain, he is coming to the game at a good time.

Fingers crossed he is listened to and his recommendations are acted upon.

6. Sad about Mick, but hello Shaun!
My team, Hull Kingston Rovers, had an up and down day on Wednesday. It was sad to hear former Canberra and St George Illawarra prop forward Mick Weyman has decided to retire immediately due to a knee injury. We heard last week that he had had a clear-out of his knee and that he could be out for 10 to 12 weeks, but the big man has now taken the best decision for himself and his family and decided to end what has been an outstanding career, having represented New South Wales and Australia.

I will always remember Mick as a hard-working, never-say-die prop who gave everything he had every time he wore the red and white of Hull KR. Whenever we scored a try and Mick came back to the North Stand for the kick off, he always got a big round of applause and cheers because we could all see the effort he was putting in. He would give us a cheeky little grin in return, especially if he had just scored himself.

Good luck Mick, it’s been a pleasure watching you perform.

On the same day the club released the news that we have signed Huddersfield Giants hooker Shaun Lunt on loan for the rest of the year. I am deliriously happy about this – we desperately need a hooker to replace Josh Hodgson, and we were all hoping that we could have bagged him in the off season. That didn’t work out and coach Chris Chester has given early season opportunities to Keal Carlile and Frenchman John Boudebza.

Carlile has been dropped for the last two games, while Boudebza’s form has been encouraging – there is light at the end of the tunnel for this inexperienced player – however, we have been lacking in good work out of dummy half this year. With Lunt we will have that in spades. He is also strong and rugged defensively and is still only 27 years old.

The Giants loaned him out for the season to the Rhinos in 2012 and he won a grand final ring with them – I’m not suggesting the same will happen in East Hull, but I guarantee he will make us a better team.

There have also been rumours in the last two weeks that Ryan Bailey will be leaving the club because he has failed to settle. The club are officially saying he will be back from injury soon, but there is just too much smoke on this one for there not to be any fire – I wouldn’t be surprised if an announcement was made shortly that we had offloaded somewhere closer to his West Yorkshire home – I’ve heard Wakefield and I’d like Danny Kirmond in exchange please!

Either way, we need him out of the door or on the field soon, because he is eating up a decent amount of salary cap for us and he needs to start earning it or let us free it up for someone who wants to play for Hull KR.