Rugby League 4 Nations Tournament

Well the squad for the upcoming 4 nations rugby league tournament has been announced and it has to be said that England coach Tony Smith has made some pretty bold and brave decisions in selecting his squad for this tournament.

Personally I think he is right in what he has done as otherwise we would have had the same problems that the squad had in the last disastrous and quite frankly embarrassing world cup. Saints and Leeds are still the 2 powerhouses of the game and we know from the RFLs review into what went wrong in the World Cup one of the problems was that the squad was basically split into 2, the Leeds camp and the Saints camp and this couldn't have been healthy for team spirit.

We have seen over the last super league season that the rest of the league is starting to catch up with Leeds and Saints - even the NRL is struggling at times to keep up with the attacking speed of the Super League, with only really Salford and Celtic Crusaders not really coming up to Super League standard. However the fact that they have another season before their franchises are reviewed gives them time to do some remedial work and the fact that the Crusaders are recruiting Brian Noble as the new coach is a positive step forward. The fact that Warrington and Huddersfield managed to both make it to the Challenge Cup Final boads well for the future of the game.

I think that the emergence of new talent like Richie Myler and Sam Tomkins who have shown great promise over the last season and who are surely the future of the England team and are being given their chance at International level early in their careers, is great credit to the coach.

The halfback positions seem to always be the area where we appear to be a couple of gears behind our australian counterparts whenever we play them both in terms of knowhow and speed. Only by blooding in younger players early in their careers will we reap the benefits in the years ahead. We may not see the fulfilment of that promise in this tournament, but I bet we do very soon. Good luck to the lads in the weeks ahead.

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