It will only get worse as the game is increasingly been operated with the interests of NRL clubs in mind.

The Raiders did have a reasonably good year when you consider all the factors that went against them including injuries to key players. They had a reasonable record against other top 8 sides having beaten the Roosters, Souths, the Storm and Cronulla (twice).

The Raiders do not do well when sides have very quick play the balls and the game resembles touch football which is why they get beaten badly by Penrith. The Raiders lost the ruck as they had quite poor line speed apart from the first few minutes. I am not sure why this happened they needed to be much more aggressive with their line speed and they needed to stop the offloads. It almost seemed as if they believed all the positive media, they got this week. The Raiders are often ignored, and they do better with a siege mentality which was really lacking yesterday. They really missed Adam Elliot particularly in defence.

If any taxpayers money was wasted on this charade then that is a disgrace.

I love your line about effort areas in defence and doubting that. So many of the things that people say about league and tactics are clearly absurd. My favourite is that defence is all about or just attitude. If that was true when Warren Ryan revolutionised defensive patterns in the 80s moving for example, to introduce left and right centres someone should have said to him ‘Warren stop wasting your time structure does not matter it’s all about attitude‘ — no one would have said that as the defence is just attitude line is clearly absurd.

With Trent Barrett he seemed obsessed about avoiding errors. I don’t know if he genuinely thought that was the key issue or if it is just something you say. After all unforced errors are something that everyone wants to avoid but if he really did focus on errors, it could have generated a very negative mindset that stopped him trying new things.

The Bulldogs had basically no attack. Both the Raiders and the Knights beat them with a low risk grinding approach. Josh Jackson is a good player, but he is too slow to be a ball playing lock in the Penrith mode. As you say he has little threat with his running game.

Not sure why Barrett left now I would have thought that he would try a more attacking style. At least give it a go — let the players help design such an approach. Dufty is not a good defender but last year for St George he created a lot of tries with his passes. I haven’t seen much evidence of this skill from him this year.

The Dogs look like they play in slow motion — they appear scared about making errors and as a result they offer almost nothing in attack.

If you are worried about player welfare then the first thing you do is ask them. This did not happen which says it all. The arrogant assumption that you can just postpone the event is so sad and out of touch. Just cancel it so we can get back to watching the Tigers play the Eels.

Great article Steve. You are 100 per cent correct — rugby league is not an international sport the actions of Australia and New Zealand have removed any doubt.

The comparisons with the Olympics and the Wallabies are completely relevant. If the NRL really valued the international game the RLWC would be going ahead. I have read the statements and the concerns. If it was a real priority the NRL would have made overtures directly to the UK Government and the Australian Government to get extra assurances and protections. This is what the game did last year in Australia. And you know what if they did that the assurances may have been met. If the UK Government gets more directly involved now, then I think that any extra assurances and arrangements could be provided for but I don’t think Australia and NZ will budge. Why? They don’t care. The RLWC is an annoyance not a priority. You judge things on actions not words.

If international matches were really a priority, then you pull out all stops to make it happen. You do what the Wallabies and Australia’s cricketers are doing — you tour. If on the other hand you mostly care about club games, then you stay at home. If you are not going to make an effort for your World Cup then when would you? Never. As for postponing the event well that is not practical. You would be up against the FIFA World Cup, good venues will not be available and Australia and NZ would be likely to pull out again anyway. This is a unique opportunity for the game in the UK with lots of Government money but Australia does not care.

The comments about Covid-19 are strange. First all players should be vaccinated. If they are the case numbers in the UK are less relevant. When Australia gets good vaccination numbers things will open up eventually but there will be cases. If Australians want zero cases forever, then we may as well go into permanent lock downs and shut the borders forever. Some people will not get vaccinated so there will be new cases even if we have a vaccination rate of 80 per cent.

In my view the IRL should just give up on Australia playing and focus on other countries. Really try to build France up, England should play PNG regularly and NZ as well. Just let Australia play when they feel like it — which will be very rarely.

The saddest thing is the way the Australian media ignores the international game. They are more interested in groin injuries among obscure NRL players than test matches.

McInnes offers almost nothing in attack – all the top sides have attacking hookers. Not only that he is just too small to play lock. He is a great clubman but I don’t see why other clubs were chasing him. Probably not a surprise that the clubs after him are not travelling too well

Most errors means nothing unless you control for how many times someone holds the ball. If you hardly ever get the ball or try much then you won’t have many errors. Also there are errors and errors. If you make an error attacking 10 metres out from the opposition’s try line on tackle 5 when trying something that is hardly the same as dropping the ball cold 10 metres from your own line.

Jack was a worthy winner. I watched every Raiders game this year – not sure that those critical of his choice have. To be consistent I have not watched every game for all the other key contenders but from what I did see it was hard for Cleary as he had so many others in his team to compete against. Wighton less so but that is how it works.

The Raiders are hardly ever on free to air and as a result they often get left out of things.

Not sure who is doing it but there appears to be quite a bit of back grounding going on to journalists. Where is Paul Kent getting all his mail, for example?

Maybe but NZ just beat England. Almost all teams looking weak apart from Australia and India which is of concern as sport needs a contest continual floggings get boring

It was a commendable performance by Warner. Any 300 in a test match is a very rare achievement to be celebrated. However, the bowling attack was very, very poor. Now true you can only play what is in front of you but it is relevant.

Some have said if it was just a flat track and poor bowling why don’t we see more triple centuries. Well first it is not just about poor bowling it is how bad it is there is bad and there is very bad. When the bowling is pathetic then other players can also cash in and you can bat for long periods. With better bowling it is much harder to get 300 as the other batsmen are getting out and you run out of partners no matter how well you are going.

I think that we should celebrate a great innings but we should be worried about the lop sided nature of this match and series. There are really only four good test sides. While I would like to see NZ do well here they probably won’t. Their only chance is to pick guys like Matt Henry and go for genuine pace. Their medium pace seamers will not succeed in Australia in isolation (there is no Richard Hadlee). So yet again it will be a very one sided set of test matches in Australia.

We need another summer sport where there is a real contest every time (may explain the sucess of the Big Bash). In few sports, other than test cricket, do people turn up to watch a predictable smashing. Sure Australia lost a series last year without their two best batsman but they hardly every lose at home and it is almost so predicatable. I like a contest

Many of the comments on the story are on the money. The Raiders have had an issue with defence not attack and the changes are designed to address that. Boyd and Paulo would occasionally pump out big metres but they could not stay on the field long which in turn made the other players stay on longer. It is hard to manage your rotation when you have two huge forwards who cannot play big minutes. Not only that, both of them, could be caught out in defence as their lateral movement is not the best and neither of them is exactly fast. They are good players but I think that their loss will improve Raider’s defence.

As for the claim that the Raiders need to improve their attitude in defence I think that this is wrong. Last year the Raiders has real defensive issues on the edges and Blake Austin was part of this. He does not have a ‘poor attitude’ he just made poor reads often close to the line. The other players did try to scramble to help which shows a good ‘attitude’ but they couldn’t do much as misreads close to the line result in tries.

It is sometimes asserted that defence is all about attitude. While there is some truth to this defence is not just about attitude. If it was all about attitude, then why do we need defensive structures and coaches? Maybe teams should employ psychologists to improve the teams ‘attitude’. Sure you make poor reads and you are just too small but your main problem is your ‘attitude’. I guess poor defenders just have a poor ‘attitude’. Nonsense some players are just poor defenders.

As for mistakes you have to defend your mistakes. The good teams can indeed the best teams can afford to deliberately give penalties as they can defend them. If your defence is so poor that you cannot defend the odd mistake, then you are lost.

Last year the Raiders conceded a lot of really soft tries this is why they lost so many close games. Attitude may have something to do with this but a lot of it was tiring big forwards and very poor reads on the edges.

Rugby League has professional teams in 5 countries: Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada and France. Australian football has professional teams in just one country.

The NRL has teams in two countries but for some reason NZ gets forgotten. It is very provincial to just compare the two sports in Australia.

There is a semi professional team in New Guinea but AFL just sticks to Australia. Does this matter? Maybe not but in world terms the AFL is an outlier – a professional sport played in only one country.

While I am mainly league fan this was a great match. Some credit has to go to Andy Farrell — Ireland’s defence has improved dramatically. They didn’t panic and really worked together as a unit.

The British sides and Ireland have improved so much in recent years — they used to concede soft tries particularly late in games but these days appear to be over. This owes at least something to ex-league players such as Farrell and Shaun Edwards.

Fittler’s argument if you can call it that says more about him than it does about the award. If he is to comment he could at least understand what the award is for and how it is judged. How about doing a bit of homework and how about actually watching the international matches that Makinson played in? I guess that would require some work — much easier to just turn up with no research and attention to detail. If that is the quality of comment that you get from him then you may as well just pick a random bloke in the pub and ask him. Fittler can do much better than this.

Rugby League’s main rival in Australia is the AFL. When AFL fans get a bit carried away I sometimes remind them that the rest of the world doesn’t care. While true it is not that important — the AFL is an incredibly successful sport. But when you call something Australian Football it says it all.

Many league fans in Australia downplay League’s international appeal even in NZ. When comparisons are made between the NRL and the AFL, NZ should be included — Auckland is closer to Sydney than Perth.

Rugby League has professional clubs in 5 countries — France, NZ, Australia, England and Canada. You can make that 6 with the PNG Hunters (semi-professional). AFL has professional clubs in exactly one country.

I watched some of the million-pound game — I was disappointed with the result but having a side in London again is a good thing. A side in Toronto or Toulouse would be better but I expect that to happen next year (Toronto).