THE decision to scrap England’s warm-weather training camp in Dubai may have been welcomed by plenty of Super League coaches, particularly those who lobbied for it, but it has still left the game looking shoddy and amateurish.

England boss Wayne Bennett wanted to take 17 players away for two weeks in January, including Mark Percival and Jonny Lomax, but last week the RFL pulled the plug.

Saints coach Keiron Cunningham was the first to openly criticise the idea behind the camp and Tony Smith and Lee Radford also put their heads over the parapet to talk about the impact on their club’s preparations ahead of the 2017 Super League campaign.

And as much as they are right, imagine how this statement released by the RFL must have gone down with Bennett.

It stated: “Following further discussions with Super League clubs, the England coaching staff and RFL have reflected on all views and concluded that the plans that are now in place would not deliver what was initially expected.”

Of course the decision massively undermines the position of Bennett, who was brought over to use his experience and prowess at the top of the game to restore England as a competitive international force.

The whole episode – which has been brought to the fore and represented as a club v country battle – shows a complete lack of joined up thinking at the top of the game.

Any discussion and analysis of the impact of Bennett’s plans should have been thrashed out and arguments won before it was announced to the world.

Bennett made his case that this camp – along with the mid-season international against Samoa Down Under – was key to England’s preparations for the 2017 World Cup.

Pulling the rug from under it like this looks like amateur night but what undermines any claim that it is short-sighted Super League coaches putting their club above the needs of the country was the fact that Bennett was doing exactly the same.

His duties with his day job as head coach at Brisbane Broncos meant that he was only going to be there for part of the camp.

If this is blowing up now, imagine what it is going to be like when a number of key players will be missing when England play Samoa in Sydney on the weekend of May 7 – in between a pair of double header Super League weekends.

I don’t think any anyone doubts that any sport benefits from meaningful international competition.

If England do well, it gives the whole of the sport a tonic which then feeds back into the club game.

In rugby union the success of England as a brand has massively boosted the club game.

The problem in league is that there is no strategy to grow the game or bring revenue into the sport short of getting the same elite players to play more games in the same comp and then asking largely the same folk to pay for it through the turnstiles.

It is not extra fitness training that the elite English players need, but a similar length season and break to their Australian counterparts.

And once that reason/explanation/excuse is taken out of the equation we can then see if it is the quality of the coaching that needs to improve to close the gap that now seems as wide as it has been since 1982.

As tempting as it is to retreat to a position of 'let's just look after the club game' that would shrink rugby league going forward just when every other sport is pushing forward.

In the short-term it will cause some arguments within the game, but is an issue that needs sorting professionally rather than through a series of public trade offs.

You can understand any cynicism when you bear in mind the shambles of the last mid-season international Down Under in 2002 and the short-term dalliance with fixtures against the Exiles - none of which saw England get any better. It is a worry that England have not made it to a World Cup Final since 1995 and has finished third in the last two Four Nations.

There is a bit of chicken and egg to it it, but to persuade club owners, coaches and fans that they should be giving up star players (like they do in rugby union) they have to show that there is some worthwhile benefit to the national team. That in turn should trickle back to the game as a whole and the clubs.

To get there initially there needs to be a persuasive, respected voice at the top selling it and making the case for England or Great Britain.

Reckon that could be a good task for Paul Sculthorpe!