How to close League’s international gap

[linny]

The NRL should have salary cap exemptions for overseas players.

 

[roughyedspud]

think you need to define what would be a "overseas player"?

would islanders & kiwis count?


bearing in mind that roughly 35% of the NRL is made up of players with kiwi or island heritage....would we then see a raft of players desperately seeking fijian,tonga,samoan,kiwi passports just to get them off the cap?

and how what that effect state of origin & the kangaroos? if a player declares himself a fijian,with the backing of his club,how the hell could he then be selected for NSW...for example :lol:

 

[LunarPark]

I think the RLEF are on the right path. I also reckon it's pretty much impossible to "close the gap" within any reasonable time frame that would make any of us on here happy.

One thing i'd like to see would be nations like France taking on some of the newer nations again. Having 2nd tier nations like France, Ireland etc playing Russia, serbia etc will boost the 3rd tier European countries. Althoguh it's understandable that France would rather focus on improving and taking on the big 3 than playing the minnows. If every nation could play just ONE single game against a nation in the tier below them every year I'd be very happy.

We also need to get rid of this mentality of being so terrified of big one sided scorelines. It's happens in most sports and it happens regularly. We prematuarley dump teams out of competitions out of fear. It's all part of the growing pains and we will have to sit through a whole lot of hammerings before a minnow steps up and beats a big team.

As said above we need more games, more concrete schedules and I'd like to add more tours like the Samoan one later this year. It would be exciting to see the likes of Ireland do a proper North American tour agaisnt Canada, USA and Jamaica instead of just sending the A team for one game. However I'm well aware that costs money so the final thing we need is money...and lots of it. So, anyone got deep pockets?