"They're not fit enough" is an often heard disgruntled call from the supporters of a losing team, but that is not always true.

If your team is conceding tries and rolling backwards to their own goal line it may appear that they've run out of energy, and the obvious remedy for this is to get the players in for extra fitness work.

How would James Graham rate?

However, this may not be the answer. It might be that the team aren't skilful enough, repeatedly making inaccurate passes, dropping the ball or kicking it out on the full will put them into 'rugby league reverse' and have them back pedalling to their own line. More time spent on improving their skill might be more beneficial.

I have often walked away from a Test match between England/Great Britain and Australia and heard people say that the Kangaroos are fitter, stronger and faster than our players, but is that true? Surely its time that we introduced some standardised physical tests to see if this is the case.

If you allow me a moment to explain what they do in the USA, you'll see that it would be quite easy and highly beneficial to introduce a similar testing programme in rugby league.

Good enough for the NFL

The NFL have a testing camp which invites players looking for a contract to attend. They have an interview with teams and a comprehensive physical, medical and psychological testing program.

They then do a 40 yard sprint test, a bench press one, a vertical jump, a broad jump, 20 yard shuttle test (agility, speed and change of direction test) an L-shaped agility test and a 60 yard shuttle run (an anaerobic test).

In addition they conduct positional specific skills test. After speaking to several people involved in our game, it would be simple and quick to agree say five physical tests for all rugby league players in this country.

Here are some suggestions:

With rugby league being a six tackle game, we need six tests to keep it all tidy and a positional specific skill test might fill that hole.

When all of the Strength and Conditioning trainers from the clubs have agreed on these tests, we then need to look to introduce them across the game. Obviously we could have targets for different age groups so that a 17 year old player knows how he rates against his peers.

I'm not for one minute saying that the fittest, strongest, fastest players make the best ones, but it is a starting point. We live in a society that now requires evidence-based decisions and this would give us some facts.

Goals for players

From a player's perspective, he wants to see if he's improving to further encourage him in the gym or on the training field.

It wouldn't need a great deal of work to liaise with the people in Australia and New Zealand and start to compare test scores from their players. Who knows if James Graham is fitter, stronger, faster than say Ben Hannant?

People often say that the NFL is 20 or 30 years ahead of Rugby League. Well they started to combine and compare their test scores in 1977 so may be its time we did something similar. There may be some Luddites out there who think that they don't want other teams knowing the test scores of their players. Why not? It doesn't mean you know what moves that they're going to put on when the game starts or how they score 80% of their tries.

I'm an impatient person who thinks that we should have had standardised physical testing at least 10 years ago when we started to receive the Lottery Funding into the game and am now wanting to know when we'll introduce the skills testing. I'm not particularly bothered what the tests are exactly to start with, we can refine them as we go along. But please, somebody get it going.

Got a question for Phil? Email him at skysportsclub@bskyb.com or use the feedback form below...

French woes

Hello Phil, In France, we sometimes speak of a 'two speed championship'. Taking this formula in another sense, I would like to apply it to our beloved 'Catalans Dragons'.

Watching the pictures with objectivity, from clashes at home against St-Helens and last Friday at Wigan, the fact is that French players are impaired to play tackles in the same way as their English opponents, due to the heavy count of penalties, yellow or red cards whistled by referees, and at the same time their playing is forcefully slowed by English teams only seldom sanctioned by English referees...

The Result? a fast-moving Wigan side explodes a slow-paced Catalans side... How can they obtain a fair treatment?Apologies for my poor English.
Olivier Montariol

PHIL REPLIES: Bonjour et merci beaucoup for your question. Your English is far better than my French and I need to rely on the bi-lingual Bill Arthur to order my lunch when we go to the South of France for a Catalans match.

The Dragons have made a poor start to 2010 but won at Salford last weekend. Don't forget that they lost six of their opening seven games in 2009 and yet still finalised the season so close to glory. They even had the eventual winners very nervous in that play-off game in Leeds.

However the point that you made about the penalties conceded is a recurring one. In 2009 they conceded the most penalties and have this year heard the referees whistle too often. David Ferriol and Olivier Elima seem to be two of their worst offenders.

I don't think that the referees want to penalise the Dragons more than any other team. It seems to me that several of their players just keep repeating their mistakes. By aiming a little lower they may find that they get penalised less for high tackles.

The other significant area is with regards to interference at the play-the-ball. Almost 50% of the penalties awarded after five rounds relate to this and Catalans know that they need to reduce the number of times that they are penalised if they want to go to this year's Grand Final.

The kicking game

Hi Phil, Having watched the opening games of the season on Sky Sports , it strikes me that more and more tries are being scored by kicks to the corner on the final tackle . Whilst the skill of the kicker under pressure and the timing of the run by the receiver cannot be anything but admired , it does appear to be an ever increasing option by teams lacking in attacking ideas.

Being an exiled Saints supporter going back a few years , I seem to remember this tactic as an piece of skill used to good effect by

Bobbie Goulding some years ago, although I am sure other players also used it .Then it was an option used occasionally, now it seems to be a soft option.

In a recent game every other try scoring attempt was as a result of a high kick to the corner which to me was a bit of a lottery as to who actually got the ball, relying on mistakes and unseen obstructions.

How about a rule change (another one) where the ball must be received in the field of play from the kick for the try to be scored .

If the ball is received over the line by the attacker then the tackle count remains with the play the ball five yards from the line.

Crazy idea? Probably, but anything to stop endless kicking to the corner. Keep up the good work on Sky.
Roy Thomas

PHIL REPLIES: The increase in the number of tries scored from kicks is probably due to an increase in the defensive standards and awareness of most teams, not a lack of attacking ideas.

Teams are now harder to break down and more conscious of how their opponents will try to score. If you go back 10 years you could see lots of examples of the acting half back diving over to score when the play-the-ball was 1 meter from the line e.g. Keiron Cunningham special. Nowadays we see far less of them because most teams have defenders crouching in position to prevent this try. . You might not like to see the tries from kicks, but I would argue that they are more entertaining than a one metre dive over from the acting half back.

I have asked several people who follow rugby league what % of tries they think were scored in Super League last year came from kicks. Some said 50%, other 70%. The answer is 15%.

Without boring you too much with stats, there are three types of kick which lead to tries and they all produce about the same number. You've noticed the cross field bomb, but a cross field chip is equally as popular as is the grubber kick behind the defenders

The idea of changing the rules to reduce the effect of kicking is not new. We've done it before to reduce the number of bombs into the in-goal area about 25 years ago. (If a defending player catches the ball it's now a 20m re-start, it used to be a goal line drop out).

I appreciate your suggestion but don't agree with it. We get over 300 passes, 300 runs, 600 tackles and 8 tries in an average Super League game. We also get about 40 kicks, of which about 8-10 will be the high ones to the corner which irritate you. If that number went up dramatically and it became like a game of Aussie Rules, which just needed tall men to catch high balls in the in-goal area then we might need to look at your idea, but at present I think it's ok

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