I'm sure everybody appreciates that the RFL have won the rights to a WC staged in 'Britain'.
But I find myself convinced by the overwhelming case for France being allowed to stage at least one, maybe two, of their pool games in Frances - always supposing that a host city would put forward a credible and solid business plan. And I think they will. I mean, it should be possible for one of the French 'hotbed' cities to project a crowd approaching 20,000, whereas a France game in the North of England would do well to attract more than a couple of thousand. What was the crowd for the recent match at Leigh? Was it about 7000? And that was against England for goodness sake! How many would they get against Tonga or Samoa?
If Montpellier has a big Lebanese community, why not have France vs Lebanon in Montpellier?
I also would hope that we'll see a really strong and workable attempt to play one of the Ireland games at a good stadium in Ireland. I don't mean Croke Park or anything on that scale, and definitely not that dump called Windsor Park. But there must be a nice 10000 all-seater stadium somewhere in Ireland that could be properly marketed and publisised as a credible Irish venue
