To an extent that endorses his point, though it's "most" of the best players are in Australia, not "all" as a previous poster alluded to.
In England, a total of 44 thousand people, pros and amateurs, play rugby league on a weekly basis. That's a tiny pool to choose from. Factor in the lesser facilities, the lesser number of coaches, really England are working on a shoestring in comparison to the Aussies. One of the RLWC teams - may have been Ireland - were training at the N.Queensland cowboys facilities, and one player spoke about the gulf in quality of the facilities in comparison to super league. More money is available at all levels of the sport in Australia. For an English player to truly fulfill his potential he needs to go to Australia.
I'd love to think at one point the game in England will catch up but that looks next to impossible. Our resources are limited, our profile in England is small. We get crumbs in terms of media spotlight. Teams playing in small stadiums in a part of the north of England, attendances averaging around 8500, when we play against the Aussies we are basically taking a spoon to a fight while they have a machine gun.
The best chance we have right now of beating the Aussies is for most of our best players to go over to Australia very early in their career and develop there, plus having a top Aussie coach would help as we saw in this tournament where the defence were outstanding in the final. In a sporting sense Australia vs England is a mismatch, so completely lopsided in favour of Australia. Heard Ian Millward say yesterday the Aussies are battled hardened as they play against quality week in week out. They are much sharper as a result. The English based players don't get anywhere near such a test, so their game isn't as developed or sharp as result, and it shows when they have to make the step up to meet quality opponents. The Aussies don't rate us and they are right to do so based on results. The only thing that shocked me was Aussie pundits openly saying this which is counterproductive to growing the interest in the game. The general media won't pick up interest in an event when they hear people in the sport itself ridiculing the standard of the opposition.
The argument against Aussies being too focused on State of Origin that there's "a big world outside Australia", if we are honest not in rugby league there isn't. Australia, Tonga and Fiji, three of the four semi-finalists, those are NRL players. We remove Australia from the rugby league map there isn't a great deal left. In time we hope that changes but right now Australia dominates the rugby league world, and I'm not talking about their national team, but the game in Australia itself.
The only way that I can see Australia no longer taking up most of the rugby league market is for the game to expand elsewhere, possibly North America. I can't see how we can increase our game in England as we are locked in a region, and to all intents and purposes outside it there's almost nothing. It's been this way for a century so I don't see it changing anytime soon. Only growth from other nations may help our own.
