PNG and France are that MASSIVE they should have their own entire website

Here GF you can watch highlights of the game at the qrl website.





The commentary is superb and the Pride have a big "Irisherman" playing for them.

You can watch a livestream of the Hunters V Easts game from 3pm Sydney/5am London time tomorrow. www.qrl.com.au/interactive/live-stream.html It should be interesting to see how the PNG forwards cope with Giant Melbourne Storm prop Mitch Garbutt.

You can watch a livestream of the Hunters V Easts game from 3pm Sydney/5am London time tomorrow. www.qrl.com.au/interactive/live-stream.html It should be interesting to see how the PNG forwards cope with Giant Melbourne Storm prop Mitch Garbutt.

Video highlights of the 20 all draw with Easts Tigers here; www.qrl.com.au/news/2014/03/31/r ... v_png.html Some good long range tries by the Hunters.

Video highlights of the 20 all draw with Easts Tigers here; www.qrl.com.au/news/2014/03/31/r ... v_png.html Some good long range tries by the Hunters.

Which is why it's a mystery to me why all these SL clubs are partnering with American RL clubs who play a tiny season with sportsmen from other games. France and PNG actually have proper RL clubs and bags of untapped talent.

I suspect that if several Super League and NRL clubs between them bought up all the talent in the PNG Hunters team for Super League 2015, the Hunters would not be too hard done by. They would still be able to recruit new talent and replace the lost players easily and field a team just as good as the current one in 2015. I suspect that NRL scouts are on the lookout at the Hunters team already, but SL clubs not.



We should also remember that a talented French teenager named Theo Fages came to Britain on his own initiative, not because Salford had scouted him.



It just requires a bit of initiative from Super League clubs' managements to see that scouting France and PNG is one new way to go to improve the SL talent pool.

If you scout the French Elite leagues you'll see that a great many of the "stars" in that comp are actually 3rd grade ANZAC/PI players. BTW, calling it the Elite comp doesn't make it Elite....kind of like the not-so-superleague



As for PNG. The Hunters are 100% full time professional players that walk, talk, sleep, eat and train with each other 24/7/52. Them being competitive in a lower tier comp where the other teams are part timers is hardly proof that SL management need to look at PNG for anything.....they recently saw the cream of both French and PNG talent here in Europe.......remind us all again how they got on?



France scored 3 tries in 4 games...Ireland scored 3 tries in 1 game!...Catalans and the Elite (sic) comp have repeatedly failed to deliver top tier talent.....and before you go on about a French player at Salford, I said top tier......not outside the play-offs.



PNG scored 5 in 3 games. The gazzillions of players they have delivered one of the worst teams at the RLWC, if not the worst.



Tonga, Samoa and Fiji offer far more in the way of talented players on the fringes of being first grade.

Alright, stop this now. You're right again.



The QLD players are indeed mainly part timers with a few full time first graders from the likes of the Cowboys and Broncos, who aren't selected being sent back to the QLD feeder clubs they have an arrangement with.



I also know a couple of aussies who went to France to play as they couldn't get s start in the NSW Cup over here. Even a Fijian international, Eloni Vunakecel is playing in France for Toulouse until he goes back to Oz to play for Wyong (with Mark O Meley) again this season.

The Hunters are only 3 months into this experiment.

They are putting some of the young talent in PNG into fulltime training and have $200k worth of gym equipment, free accommodation and all the food supliments supplied, so for the last 3 months these guys have been getting pretty much everything young Australian and English players have been getting, and they are also playing at a standard equal to or higher than the under 20s comp in Australia. They have some older guys, but they are concentrating on giving young players a chance to impress.

3 months in most of these young guys have shown they can compete against many players who have NRL experience and they can only keep improving.

That's complete rubbish. There are stacks of PNG players that have made it in SL and NRL, and there are a good number of French players that have made it in SL with the Dragons and a few elsewhere.



In a full time pro environment I think you'll get a lot more out of the best French elite league players than people in SL realise.

That's complete rubbish.



The PNG based players suffer from a lack of nutrition and training necessary for top flight professional rugby league. The national team suffered from that (as well as missing their star Australia based player, James Segyaro), which had a huge impact on their World Cup performance. The important thing about the Hunters, as roopy points out, is that they now get these nutrition and training conditions, which Australians take for granted, on a regular basis. The Hunters has a player enhancement regimen that all of PNG needs, which is why it is a good recruiting vehicle for the NRL and SL.



As for France, the Catalans have produced a host of top class players that would find a place in any other Super League or NRL team (as Remi Casty, Julien Rinaldi, Olivier Elima and Jamal Fakir have already proven). The Elite competition has given us the likes of Morgan Escare and Eloi Pelissier, to name just two who have been elevated to Super League from the Elite.



Tonga and Samoa do not offer far more in the way of talented players on the fringes of being first grade. Those countries provide emigrants, who grow up and learn rugby league in New Zealand and Australia, and then make it into the NRL. Fiji alone is the source of raw talent that has been plucked from the country's amateur competition to the NRL. (e.g. Akuila Uate, Semi Radradra, Marika Koroibete, Sisa Waqa). Fiji needs more attention and development money from the NRL, at which point it can become a major source of talent for either NRL or SL. Fiji appears to have a better nutrition system than PNG, which is why PNG poses difficulties for talent scouts that Fiji does not. But the Hunters can be seen as a bridge between the hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic but poorly fed rugby league players in PNG, and the high physical standards demanded by professional rugby league.

Just to question a couple of your points as you prove that if you say things confidently people may actually listen to you.



1. Name ALL these French players who have played in the NRL? It's just that I look forward to seeing Casty playing for Newtown in a few weeks time as I watched Gigot play reserve grade for the Sharks last year before he WALKED OUT on them.



2. Was Akuila Uate plucked from the fiji's amateur comp to play in the NRL? I can tell you now the correct answer isn't the one you gave. He moved to oz in his teens as was playing on the central coast when spotted. Oh and Sisi Waqa came over to Sydney and played Rugby UNION for Gordon. Not plucked from the amateur Rugby League comp in Fiji as you state.