THE fact that players the players on international duty on Friday are likely to be backing up on Sunday is nothing new.

In the 70s and 80s players routinely turned out for the clubs on Sundays after being involved in Great Britain duty the day before.

Back in 1989 Great Britain full back Steve Hampson was sent off in the second test against the Kiwis and then was given his marching orders the following day too while playing for Wigan. No fatigue from him there then apart from turning the bath taps on.

Friday’s Exiles game has understandably brought a few rumblings – ones which could have been avoided had it been played on a blank weekend.

It is one more game for our elite players to play – but is it such a big deal?

English players play far more games than their counterparts in the NRL and this is routinely trotted out as the explanation for poor international performances.

Given that all the Exiles players play in the same competition as the England side, that excuse will carry no weight this weekend.

The players who played not so long ago must chuckle to themselves when they hear talk of burn out – especially the ones who recall getting paid in washers for losing pay.

Sure, it is not that simple – the fact that the modern group of players are elite athletes and have found new ways and means to maximise the sheer explosiveness of the sport brings pitfalls. The game is clearly much quicker and, although cleaner, the collisions are enacted at a much higher intensity.

My concern is we play too many games with nothing tangible to show for it. In the 70s players would have up to 30 league games, and on top of that there was the potential of up to four Lancashire Cup ties, a similar number of Tuesday night BBC 2 Floodlit Trophy games, and up to five in both the John Player and Challenge Cup. Three games in the Premiership wrapped up the season.

That is a packed schedule – to say the least, but the plus side was it gave all the teams something to play for. It also brought a bit of variety and more potential for rewards for good play throughout a nine month season.

As much as I don’t like the way that Warrington have bought in their team, they are on fire at the moment and playing some fine football. If they had started a season like this 20 years ago they would have probably had two pots on the sideboard by now. (Looking back to 1980-81 that is exactly what they did under the coaching of Billy Benyon.) But they will come away from this season with nothing should their bubble burst at the back end of the season. (We can only hope.) We need to engineer a space to slot in another knockout cup early on in the season.

Personally I could never understand why the Lancashire Cup had to go and if we were smart we could use the early rounds to replace the meaningless pre-season friendlies. If this competition was so unpopular why were the crowds so massive in it its final year?

And in order to buy back two weeks, revert back to a top six play off in order to stop rewarding mediocrity and scrap Millennium Magic, which only serves to distort the final league table.