Does any other country have a squad so dominated by 2 domestic teams?

Another interesting quote from the same article: [i"but Senior, who today confirmed his retirement from the international game"[/i



Not sure who will replace him. Shenton? Yeaman?

ATKINS!

You're right, thats a massive problem but it's still hard to accept that they couldn't get over it, for their own sake if nothing else





Probably the only comparable situation is the French. They have their Superleague players and the rest from their domestic league. They wouldn't see each other as rivals, but there would be a distinct divide.



Maybe they had similar issues

They spend all season knowing these players are their biggest rivals, I guess that isn't easy to turn on and off.



To me its yet more of an example of why we need every club developing its young players to stop such domination from 2 teams occurring again.

Arch rivals? sorry but i always thought Bradford were our arch rivals not St Helens.

At the moment (or at the time surrounding the World Cup) which team is your biggest threat - Saints or Bradford?

Rival(s) - definition [iOne that equals or almost equals another in a particular respect.[/i



I don't think so

Leeds and Saints games are England’s State of Origin IMO.



You couldn’t ask for a better comparison. But yeah I hope its all sorted out come the four nations and we should win because IMO we have the best players in the world over here atm.



Its just petty pride that’s stopping us from dominating the international stage at country level like we do at club level with Leeds.

It looks to me as though we won't have the Leeds/Saints domination again this season.



Saints may not be as strong as previous seasons, Wigan look like they could challenge, so could Bradford and Warrington if things go right





Huddersfield look like a team on the up and Hull should be back in the top 6.



Maybe I'm dreaming, or at least being overly-optimistic, but it's going to be very competitive this season IMO, and the England squad for the 4 nations could look very different

I will be expecting the likes of Sam Burgess, Sean O Loughlin and Gareth Raynor to be back in the international set up next year depending on their injuries.



Young players to keep an eye on are probably Tom Briscoe from Hull FC, Sam Tonkin from Wigan and Steven Lawrence from Huddersfield. But I really fancy Lee Smith from Leeds to set the international stage alight if he’s fit by then - his performance at OT last year was world class.



So many options but lets see who steps up to be counted.

Thats the problem, players show potential but then it seems to go missing between club level and international level!



Hopefully we will see a situation were there is a a lot more competition for positions rather than what we have now were too many positions pick themselves simply because nobody else is good enough.