The true pinnacle of rugby league

Australian Kangeroos should have toured the Pacific Islands such as PNG, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and New Zealand Maori. They should pick a young uncapped players and picked a couple of older experienced guys. 1 - James Tedesco 2 - Brett Morris (vc) 3 - Will Chambers 4 - Dane Gagai 5 - James Roberts 6 - Micheal Morgan 7 - Ben Hunt 8 - Aiden Tolmen (vc) 9 - Cameron Smith (c) 10 - Josh Papalli 11 - Wade Grahem 12 - Gavin Cooper 13 - Josh Jackson ------- 14 - Jake Granville 15 - Tariq Sims 16 - Corey Oates 17 - David Klemmer

It's not even a case of thinking outside the box, is it?

Just use qld cup players or nsw cup players for the australian team. The jersey is more important than those players reason if not, qld and nsw can play the international sides as separate teams.

Two words mate. Walkabout Bars. Without a doubt THE place to watch league or rugby when in the UK so long as you don't mind drinking out of jugs to save the huge wait for the bar. There's two in London and a few more thoughout England.

I've said it before; while the SOO is playing the Kiwis' and Pacific nations should have 3 double headers, that would help the Pacific nations no end and stop the boredom of not much footy. Then the kiwis' and PI teams maybe able to pay their players so they don't turn to SOO and the Roos' for cash, ala Papalii/Tamou/Holmes and I think I am missing a few others, oh Tony Carroll and more. I think Roos' supporters would be spewin if we had the SOO and had grabbed alot of their side. I know it's not the Roos' fault, but it's not right. What can a player do when you got 90k waved at you.

and isolation. Carn the Wallabies!!!!

Its the NRL's fault that you couldn't view the game in the UK. It is tucked away on Premier Sports which shows all games each week and NHL and other different sports. Ironically Sky Sports held the UK rights during a time when Morley was the only Brit in the competition and apparently viewing figures were pretty good. At a time where so many good English players are in the NRL it really should be a priority for Rugby League in Aus and UK for NRL games to be shown on Sky Sports where potential viewers dwarf Premier Sports.

The one defining characterisitc of many rugby league fans is their propensity for doomsday predicitions.

I'm good at a lot of things. Some of them better than others though.

I don't particularly care for this whole state rivalry stuff. But if I were to offer an opinion, the Morris boys and Jennings are freaks while Gallen is a workaholic. It boggles the mind that Daley hasn't made good use of his backline.

Though I can understand the frustration - after all, you are supposed to pick the strongest side - Benji is not part of the World Cup 2017 plans. Whatever else may be happening, Kearney is also thinking long term here. And personally, I have no problem with that.

It's been great seeing Rugby Union getting the headlines over Soccer in the UK but also been great watching 40000 plus at Magic Weekend in Newcastle add to seeing an excellent Super League grand final which ex England Rugby Union coach Brian Ashton said was the best Rugby out of both codes played that weekend and then after the Rugby Union World Cup final I got the New Zealand League texts to look forward too.

I was in England when the NRL and super league grand finals were on after trying 58 channels i could not find the NRL GF how ever the AFL was broadcast the day before. Trying to catch up with the super league GF was near as impossible i found a quarter page article in London newspapers on match day 9 pages back just beside the weather and cartoons after turning through 5 pages of rugby and 4 of soccer. The game was up against England vs Uruguay both sold out, both in Manchester and the only thing the media were interested in was a dead rubber in the rugby The following day after a absorbing final there was a half page article on page 8 describing what great and memorable game it was however most of the article was on the loss of 3 players including Sinefield the England captain and some 18 year old wiz from Wigan going to rugby this month the same on the BBC the only channel that had any highlights of the after giving a brief description they then went to a 20 minute post mortem of the Rugby with out highlights or even photos of the game so tight has commercial tv got the rights tied up. If the BBC is covering your sport live you are up there with field hockey and international croquet Some of the discussion and later reported in print is why English rugby is not better at utilizing the resources of rugby league with the suggestion that academy be set up in Manchester to better facilitate and identify talent earlier leave them playing League and living at home but give them rugby coaching so when they are old enough the transition will be quicker and easier England rugby clubs have a salery cap of $11mil and will be $13 mil by 2018 So Sliemman is very good at gilding the lily with international rugby league ......... by all accounts ticket sales are selling well for the three-test league series yet a lazy 90 000 Romanian and Irish fans turned up to watch a game of rugby at Wembly 2 weeks ago now that is tickets selling well I don't want to hear about Scotland Ireland or Tonga all of which are resident teams what about saving England if i could not watch the NRL grand final in the second biggest Rugby league participant nation on earth and had to turn through pages of sport to find a few paragraphs on its own grand final Then the future of international league is very bleak indeed

Not quite "best of the rest" - that's a bit harsh on the Queensland players since 2007, but fair call for the current NSW team. Hypothetically, if NSW and Queensland competed in Internationals then Queensland would be ranked no. 1 in the World, followed by New Zealand. Grand Finals and Word Tournaments are won by the "best team on the day" but would that team be capable of winning a 3-match series against Queensland - with 10 years of consistent selections and very few injuries ? Its been observed that Queensland's greatness has actually coincided with a weaker Kangaroos team. perhaps the NSW players have disrupted the cohesion that exists between the Queensland players. if so then the Australian selectors should have had the balls to shun the NSW players and just select the entire Queensland team. If you were picking a World team, then the "spine" selections would be closely contested between Kiwis and Maroons: 1. Billy Slater / Greg Inglis vs Roger Tuivasa-Sheck 6. Johnathon Thurston vs Kieran Foran 7 . Cooper Cronk vs Shaun Johnson 9. Cameron Smith vs Issac Luke

Kearney to me looks to be someone who is to stubborn to know when he has made a mistake, he would rather stick to his guns and dig himself into a bigger hole then to admit he was wrong and make things right. The fact that he has mentioned guys like Lewis Brown, Hiku and Tohu Harris as players he would have ahead of Benji shows just how clueless he really is and is just riding success on the back of having some of the games premier talent at his disposal making him look better as a coach then he actually is. With no Benji, Foran or Johnson to provide the Kiwis with tactical plays Kearney has basically left it to Hiku and Lolohea to run the show and it was evident on the weekend. regardless of Benjis ankle injury he was never going to be picked by Kearney which is baffling.

And Origin for me will be the best of the rest. How can it be the pinnacle when none of the players from the number one rated team play in it?