Quote ="Wellsy13"Did you not read the original post?
That would be great, but not practical.
You forget that in order to fill 6 international teams, you need at least 108 players. Unlike union, Europe only has one professional league to choose players from. They have three. Clubs are not going to release 8-10 players each to fill these teams. You'd need free weekends, and there just isn't enough of them currently.
Until we build our player pool and the number of professional clubs we have, it will not be possible to have a big international scene.'"
I think you've made a very good point here with the lack of space in the calendar. Any potential tournament will probably have to see either a mid season club break brought in, or some rejigging with the fixtures/league structure.
Also, if they half it, they'll kill the competition before it starts. You have to put a full strength England side in otherwise the tournament will be treated with contempt by others (TV, media, fans), thus making sure it doesn't grow. The problem you then have is that a full strength England side [ishould[/i beat most of the others convincingly. Although with a tournament like this you need to look at it in the long term and not worry about some of the results in the short. I think France took a hiding initially in the 6 nations, as well as Italy before improving a little. France obvs improved a lot.
It would be nice to see the tournament go ahead, I'd personally like to see the game expand internationally, and think this could play a key role. I think they also have to maybe look at the 6 Nations and see where it goes wrong, one thing being that it's a closed shop. A full England side is a must as they bring the media attention to the competition and give it some profile (to a degree). Thinking further, if we're genuinely serious about expansion within Canada and the USA, then the competition needs to go there too making it a northern hemisphere tournament.
If we could muster 3/4 free weeks in the calendar then for me, the best way would be to put the teams in smaller pools of as close a quality as possible, and as the crowds are unlikely to be large, play them as a magic weekend style event over those 3 weeks. So for example (based on current rankings):
Pool A
England
Scotland
France
Ireland
Pool B
Wales
USA
Serbia
Canada
Pool C
Italy
Jamaica
Russia
Spain/Holland/Belgium - wherever there is a possible expansion opportunity.
So over the weekend you'd get 6 games over 2 days at a decent stadium - you could play safe and have this at a Newcastle/Coventry/Old Trafford and use the money to put into expanding the game in other areas, or you could mix it and take it to Florida/Toronto/South of France etc to hopefully gain traction and a foothold.
Anyway, the feasibility is probably sketchy at best. Although if we were to bring this in and include possible promotion/relegation from Pools, you could maybe see a few of those countries locked out of the 6 Nations suddenly starting to think about RFL.
