That's great, there may be an opening in Canada as they seem to like their contact sports.

SOO is going to pretty much kill the Int game in the Southern Hemisphere so I would concentrate on trying to get 3-4 competitive teams out of Europe. Will be interested to see the appetite for Int RL the new ARL commision has, if any. At the least I would love to see us pursue a World nines every pre season and bring back Ashes 3 match test series. We can live in hope!

The ARL Commission is supposedly working on rules for Origin eligibility. John Grant at least seems to understand the nonsense re someone like Kasiano devalues the Origin concept, as much as it weakens NZ. The problem is that you'll always have one state weaker than the other, and the management of that team being willing to bend the rules to get some potential star into the team. I suspect no amount of tinkering with eligibility criteria will change that.

NSWRL won't let him, they need Kiwis and Fijians to keep close to Q'land!

I'd like to see a mid-season 5 Nations in the northern Hemisphere of England, France, Wales, Scotland & Ireland. The same model as Union, 4 games league format. If we do away with the Exiles thing then I'm sure it could be fitted in.
And a mid-season 5 Nations down under of Australia, NZ, PNG, Fiji, Samoa/Tonga/CI under the same format.

Then an end of season format something along the lines of:
Year 1 - GB v NZ 3 test series
Year 2 - GB v Aus 3 test Ashes series
Year 3 - Aus v NZ 3 test series
Year 4 - World Cup

I certainly think the end of season format is do-able, and the 5 Nations in the northern hemisphere should be possible. I'd be surprised if the NRL would be happy with the league being disrupted for a southern hemisphere 5 Nations to help out the other countries but I wish they could see past the end of their noses.

All of these ideas for international expansion are pie-in-the-sky without respective domestic leagues. What is the point of trumpeting X number of international sides playing RL if only a tiny handful of the players are born outside of England, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands?

I’d agree with a slight change to

Year 1 GB + France tour southern hemisphere
Year 2 Four nations
Year 3 Auz, NZ and a Pac island side tour the northern hemisphere
Year 4 world cup

(the way i would structure it)With the tours being full tours once every 8 years, either SL, or the NRL start and finish the season one month earlier. If, for instance, last year had been a GB tour to Australia, SL could have started 8th of jan, or even as early with the traditional boxing day games (which would give a couple of rest weeks within the season) finishing the season on the 10th of september instead of the 8th of Oct, we could have had the bulk of squad in Aus by the 6th of sept, with the GF players coming the week after.

10th of sept is SL GF,
21st Sept GB (minus GF finalists) v one of the clubs which didnt qualify for the NRL play-offs,
24th GB V Samoa (in Samoa)
28th GB v one of the clubs eliminated from the first round of the NRL play-offs
1st Oct GB v PNG (in PNG)
5th oct GB V one of the eliminated Semi-finalists
9th Oct NRL Grand Final on stand alone weekend
12th Oct GB v Indiginous All Stars
16th Oct GB v Fiji (in Fiji)
21st Oc GB v A Pac Island select side

28th four nations starts, finishing 19th Nov.

The International game is expanding rapidly.

In 2000 you really couldn't find more than half a dozen countries with genuine comps - Aus, NZ, England, France, PNG and Russia - all other countries had a few halfd attempts at games and most of the teams for the 2000 WC were made up teams.

12 years later and we have genuine comps in over 20 countries, and some like Lebanon, Fiji, USA and Serbia have multiple comps.

USA have as many as five competitions - AMNRL, USARL, Jaxsonville 4 team comp, Hawiian comp and mid west development games.

In raw terms, there were less than a dozen teams outside the top 5 nations in 2000, and now there would be 500 teams in up to 30 countries.

Kevin Gordon is half Filipino (his mother). By picking him you will be depriving the Philippines of one of their stars, (along with Craig Wing, who also has a Filipino mother, and who we are waiting to play scrum half or hooker if he returns to rugby league.). Gordon at full back and Wing at scrum half, along with Gold Coast Titans Matt Srama (half Filipino, half Polish) at hooker, would be a formidable spine combination for the Philippines. The Philippines also has South Sydney's star Andrew Everingham available to play centre or wing.

By picking Gordon for Scotland you would be wrecking the prospects of rugby league in the Philippines, an especially reckless move on the eve of their big Test against Thailand in October!

Are you prepared to give up our current funding from Sports England by declaring our selves Great Britain?

England would still exist & compete in world cups, so the funding wouldn't be lost.

a 5N, if it happens, needs to be every year so that the international game & smaller teams can get regular exposure. Having it in 5 weeks during the middle of the season (July time) would allow it to happen after the football season has finished and when, cricket aside, there's little other sport on (the olympics, and irregular football tournaments aside).

End of season could be used for tours by the various sides so that there'd be 3 games either end of the season for internationals.

I don't think the Exiles is a bad idea, but it has to be Europe v Exiles, so that the French can play as well, as currently they're excluded.

Altogether the events we probably want are

INTERNATIONAL

World Cup-ever four years
5 Nations-yearly, 4 games
Autumn tour-yearly, 3 games

DOMESTIC

Exiles-yearly, 1 game
County Origin-Yorkshire v Lancashire v Cumbria, 2 games
Magic Weekend One-Opening weekend, full round of fixtures inc. GF rematch
Magic Weekend Two-CC Quarter Finals

Sports England funding is not reliant on there not being a GB team. Do you think Athletics or any of the other Olympic sports get nothing from sports England?

A mid-season European 5 nations tournament would offer nothing other than adding 4 blow out scoring matches to an already congested fixture calendar.

Look on a well know video site for a review of the 1990 kanagroo tour.

Great crowd at Wembley.
Packed Old Trafford/Elland Road.
Great rugby from both sides.
Creative halfbacks.
Good crowds for the club/Aus games.

And that was an era when Australia were oozing class all over the paddock and the series was tight as anything. The standard of rugby IMHO was miles better than the '13 gym monkeys' smashing hell out of each other we have today. Players with injuries were desperate to make the Ashes tours on both sides, it meant that much to them.

Since that series, and that era. The International game declined.

There would be more than 4 games in a 5 nations tournament. Its like you thought there was only one team which mattered.

I'd agree it has, but not by as much as some people think.
The 3 Tests v Australia in 1990
At Wembley - 54,569
At Old Trafford - 46,615
At Elland Road - 32,500
Total - 133,684

In the 2011 4 Nations the 3 major England games
At Wembley - 42,344
At the KC v New Zealand - 23,447
At Elland Road - 34,174
Total - 99,965

Considering the lack of international success, one game was v NZ and plenty of other factors I don't think that's too bad a comparison.

Back in 1990, the RL didn't offer discounts or ticket deals as they do currently. I guess if you had the same offers back then, then I am sure the crowds would of been more at Wembley. Old Trafford and Elland Road were a sell out.

Also, the Aussies used to have massive travelling support (think Hull KR

, who came on orgainsed tours and were very much part of the atmosphere. Likewise when Britain toured down under ala the magic night in Melbourne. Magic moments like that, we are never likely to see again, and to me the game is much more poorer for it.

It wouldn't add to the fixture calendar though-you can just say that players who play internationally miss that week's round of SL. Having to play without internationals is a major feature of the union season, and I don't see why we couldn't do it. It creates good opportunities for sides lower down SL to carve out some results, and for fringe & youth players in the big sides to stake a claim for a first team spot.

Who, for instances, steps up when Wigan are without Tomkins, Charnley, Richards, McIlorum, Hock & O'Loughlin? Or Wire are without Atkins, Bridge, Briers, Myler, Carvell, Westwood, McCarthy and Harrison?

Partly due to replacing the Ashes with tri/4 nations imo. Does anyone really care about the 4nations? Other reason is the game in the UK isn't producing the star talent we had in the early 90's and we have had a further 20+years of losing to the Kangaroos. There is only so much hope a fanbase can have!

Call me nostalgic but I'd go back to Ashes series, 3 match tournaments v Kiwis, 5 nations every 4 years and a WC every 4 years. Proper tours (without the club games) that go for 6-7 weeks either GB touring Sth Hemi or AUs/Kiwis touring Nthn Hemi. Have European cup for the lesser nations and mid east cup and a Sth Hemi cup and make them regular and meaningful. Make eligibility make sense and don't force star players from other countries to nominate for Oz just to play SOO.

Fixed!

Why are we not producing talent like we did in the 90s? Easy. Too many imports. It's like the Premiership, you can either have the elite competition where everyone wants to play, and for that the International game suffers (look at England). You cannot have both. But saying that, SL are not attracting the big 'names' from down under to play, like when the seasons were split down under and in England. Gone are the days when you saw proper 'Testmen' like Gary Jack, Bob Lindner, Andrew Ettingshausen, Wally Lewis, Brett Kenny, Peter Sterling etc wanting to play in England. I have said for years, that the English game is either a retirement home for average or 'past it' overseas players, and that throttles the development for the youngsters in our game.
Having coached for many years at both amateur and rep rugby, the talent is there to be seen and have proved it within their pro clubs, yet are shown the door at pro clubs in favor for a 33 year old Aussie who was very average in the NRL.

I think the format of the regular SL season is intimately tied up with the formatting of the international game.

SL needs to have a sensible, and fair, number of rounds (for instance, Warrington, Huddersfield & Catalans get an additional 2pt gimme by having their magic weekends against Widnes, Salford & London, as against Leeds, Wigan & Saints, who play Bradford and each other).

Plus, the Challenge Cup needs to involve all teams and be a straight knockout competition. With all of Super League, Championship, Championship 1 & Elite One Championship you have 44 teams. That would leave 20 spots to open qualification from all teams at all levels who wished to enter, with a subsequent pure knockout over 6 rounds to the final at Wembley.

6 CC Weekends, 26 SL weekends leads to a 32 week (call it 8 month) season, starting the last weekend in February and finishing in October. 5 Nations to be played in June/July, and Autumn internationals to be played in November.

Any stats on number of imports? I seem to remember most clubs having 5+ imports in the 90's

I think it was no more than three in the 1990s.

Why would Sean O'Loughlin play for Ireland when he can play for England?

A minor point, but i would like to point out that Eamon O'carrol plays for Widnes.