Reply to thread

It's undoubtedly the players, or a combination of players and the system.

From memory the exact comment from recruiter I was speaking with was "Vic Metro/city kids are soft"

Now that's a generalisation, but they had no issue with recruiting Vic country kids, or players from any other state (but obviously had a home state bias)

In the NFL/NBA USA kids go away for college, so are used to living away from home before turning professional.

In NRL there is a very different system kids are often contracted to clubs from 15yrs old @ $5k/yr + merch + training camps etc, and aren't drafted to clubs, so when they leave for opportunity it is of their own volition.

There is also a very different makeup of nationalities, with ~45% of NRL players having a pacific island (including NZ) heritage.

Melbourne storm do a lot of recruiting from country QLD, but look at this year even they have Josh Addo Carr wanting to come back to Sydney to be closer to family, so they certainly aren't immune.

Frankly I think you could get rid of the draft and let the salary cap enforce equalization, as the GWS/GC experience has shown getting early draft picks, just to be raided by Victorian clubs in 2 years when the draftee contract expires doesn't help the club at all. 

But that's a completely different discussion.