Graham Lowe: Clubs should organise own world series

I've been in England for five weekends now and there is no doubt that the best sides over here are right up with the Broncos.

Since it appears that international football is never going to be any great shakes with just Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain competitive, the game should resurrect the idea of international club football.

The English clubs did not take it seriously during the Super League era because they are more interested in winning cups in their own competition. It was always a holiday trip for them, ending their season and meeting the Aussie clubs early in the year. But the seasons are in parallel now.

Leeds, St Helens, Warrington and Hull would put the cleaners through the Warriors.

The influence of players and coaches from the Australian competition is obvious and to some extent it is stifling the locals' natural game. There is a sameness in game plan creeping in, less attack and more emphasis on defence, a conservative approach that is not quite as attractive to watch.

The level of Australian and New Zealand influence here is getting to the unhealthy stage. There are a lot of good young players but some of the clubs are not well run and so they are not developing as they should. The clubs hire coaches from outside and the coaches look for quick-fix options which involve buying players in.

The English clubs should do more development work and if they did they would find they had players of the talent of those in the NRL. With more locally-based players competing, there might be a better chance of international club football becoming a success.

It could be run like soccer's UEFA competition. The only negative would be the greed and selfishness of the NRL clubs, which already play games when it comes to releasing players for internationals.

The Kiwis have the coach, the talent and the motivation to win the Tri-Nations series this year but, if Australia win it again, the international game has to be looked at and the best option might be an international club competition.

For a start it would showcase a lot of players who cannot now make the Australian team - the Cowboys backs Matt Bowen and Ty Williams are exciting stars of the game but will they make the Kangaroos? Similarly, there are a lot of good, talented young kids over here but will they get a run in the Pommy side?

The game needs new leadership. There is a vacuum internationally and the powerful clubs are taking advantage of that for their own interests.

It does not look like either the Warriors or the Roosters have the ability to make the playoffs now and, if they did, they would be coming in last and sitting like rabbits in the headlights. The Roosters appear to have really taken their eye off the ball.

Coach Ricky Stuart seems to have been too worried about New South Wales in the State of Origin series, pouring too much of his attention into bettering Gus Gould's record. He was billed by the Sydney media as the new super-coach but they'll have to revise that.

The Warriors look short of know-how and that is a coaching issue, you can't hide that fact. In their coaching box they have one of the best jigsaws in the NRL. You can talk around it as much as you like but they have a great squad of players; they just can't figure out how to put it all together.

They cannot go on kidding themselves that things will get better. The new coaching staff of Tony Kemp, Ivan Cleary and Kevin Campion made much of the fact they thought the team were unfit at the start of 2004 and concentrated a lot in that area. Possibly they thought that was the edge they needed and forgot that other teams do all that anyway.

Steve Price and Ruben Wiki have been great buys for them but the rest just haven't done their job.

The frustrating issue for the Warriors' fans is that there has never been anyone able to extract the best from the players. John Monie came close in the early days. But throughout the club's history there has been a constant procession of players out the door to other clubs, where they are developed into top-class players.

Being a privately-run organisation is not helping the Warriors right now. Cullen Sports has brought a lot to the game and business experience is valuable. But they think they are dealing with products - footballers are a unique product. Unless there are football people involved it will fail and the Warriors do not have enough of those. Business people are easily fooled when it comes to football.