A non traditional paper dares print an article about RL and there's already one moron bleating about the content not being quite right. Classic.

A fair if short piece, I would be interested to know where he got his story from? Done on an economical scale it could work. I am a believer that GB should be the major international side although it would in essence be mostly English at this time. But if you make selection criteria for GB conditional on playing in the six nations then it would add more value to the non England sides. It would also be nice if the minor nations in the southern hemisphere had a similar competition. He is also right about Dave Valentine although before my time (& I am a pensioner) you could add George Fairburn & Alan Tate to the list of Scots League players. Apologies to those I have missed.

I think it means a return to what we had before.

We had GB as the main international side and then we had England, which players like Mark Calderwood played for. So GB would include the top players from all the nations, England would be something like England Knights.

Just a thought that if we did go back to GB we could start attracting top union players like the days of Davies, Devroux, Moriarty , Quinnell etc.
Would these guys have switched codes if there only option was a second string Welsh team to play for.
Every player wants to play on the biggest stages but until international rugby league gets recognised on the world sports circuit it will fail to attract new faces to the sport.
Also with reference to another thread on here regards the next international been streamed on the Internet with a cost of £3.50. Yes the die hards will pay for it but I can't see one neutral seeing the game.
If our leaders were in charge of plc company's they would have been sacked years ago because all they are is plodders and not even very good plodders at that.

Couldn't think of a worse thing to bring back than what us effectively (for most teams involved) a second string 6N dressed up as a first team competition and regularly won (by a large margin) by a complete second team.

Awful awful idea. The home nations should not be playing at the same time as Great Britain unless it is clearly labelled a second team, in which case it would be a very low-key comp anyway.
England Knights shouldn't be playing first teams either. Damages that nation's credibility and that of international rugby league.

I can see what you mean but we have got to try something when the union lot first tried it it must have taken a wile to get going so lets try something

Wellsy is correct. It is insulting to the serious rugby league nations -- France and Wales -- to have a second string England team. Play the first England team or don't play England at all.

It is no argument to say "let's try something" when that something is so flawed that the media and most rugby league fans will not take it seriously.

Dear Dave,
As an ardent RL fan, l search the Media, fot anything and everything RL, in none heatland media, often you get a jurno wanting to fill some inches in his rag, maybe he,s having a quiet day or his boss has given him something to practice on. Often the nationals like to pretend they promote RL while simply having a snidy go at us.
6 Nations, he,s having a laugh, England 2nd team? at the moment the best 25 English players play for England, yeh! the rest search the records to see if their Granny by chance had an Irish wolfhound, a Welsh terrier or a Scotty, so they can pull on the appropriate jersey. S with 2 English teams, that will narrow the player pool down somewhat yeh!
England played 5 won 5
England 2 played 5 won 4
The rest, yeh right!.

This jurno then found something re Dave Valentine, a Scot, who captained GB, he knew where he came from, but either didn,t know or couldn,t be bothered to find out who he played for. as a child i watched Dave play at Fartown, top player, and proud to have seen him.

Dear Dave,
Part Two, l am nearly 70, so much too old to know everything, but l do know slack d journelism when l see it,
Just two more things Dave, Why do you think l am a moron?, and why do you feel the need to tell the whole world?.
Over to you Dave.

When did the union lot set up a 6 Nations at the same time as a Lions Tour involving second string sides?

People wonder why international rugby league isn't growing? Look at the structure being put forward for the reasons why!

Where is anyone saying a second string competition? GB should play Australia, NZ, France. Playing in the six nations apart from the French & Italian players would be the criteria for selection to GB, only GB should tour down under. The whole idea though should be run as the union clubs are, in that they have to release players when asked & International duty takes precedence over super league. That is were the trouble starts getting todays fans to buy into, attend & pay decent ticket prices for International series.

The players that you mention all came to RL for the money, not to play International RL
The cash offered by RL, at the time, was significantly more than they could make in Union. Plus, the challenge of "proving" themselves in the other code.

Totally agree with your comments on the streaming of the game though.
IF we want to get our sport in front of the masses, it has to be on "free" TV.

Even SL, which may get a few hundred thousand viewers on Sky, is dwarfed by audiences on the BBC (when games are shown).

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.

TRUE lets make super league Bigger lets have if possible 16 teams like OZ and still have R and P 1 up 1 down

Yes I did read the original post, He & everyone else is assuming that it would be England knights, I brought up reverting to GB which would stop that. The rest of your points are valid but unless there is a rapid growth in the international game our great sport will remain a Northern curiosity & probably die off in the UK. I am not saying its easy but we have to try & save our great game & get more players at all levels in as many countries as possible.

Last week Wigan U19s versus Leeds U19s was streamed live on social media and was seen/ accessed by about 40 000 people (According to the media). That is better than Sky and BT got/get for some RU matches. " If you build it they will come."

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.

The standard would be absolutely dreadful. Imagine the current player pool but spread across more teams. Horrendous.

Am all in favour of a 6 Nations. Though I'd start with a 4 Nations of England, Wales, France & Scotland. I'd have each nation play each other once but don't have a final. So 3 games, every year.
We have to start relatively small and build over time. Even that 3 guaranteed top games every year would be a massive improvement on the current international calendar.
Establish a "home ground" for the other nations. So Wales, for instance, always play their home games at the same place and start to build. If nations and players both know there are 3 games every year they can plan and start to really develop a feeling of a proper national team, not just a bunch of randomly selected players who get together 2 weeks before the next one-off game.

Though it cannot be a GB 2nd team masquerading as England, as mentioned that just devalues the international setup.

We don't always have to play all our very best players. We can rest 1 or 2 and obviously the NRL players but it can't be a GB u21's. It has to be players who would at least be in or very near to the squad for an Aussie tour.

Viewing figures for the aviva premiership are much better than for superleague. Super league gets about 80,000 a game, massively down from the halcyon days when Saints and Leeds were wowing the audiences of 250,000 viewers. Who wants to tune in and watch a load of average players knock on for 80 minutes? no wonder the rfl just Bent over, spread its legs and took whatever deal Sky offered. The decline is terminal

Regards

King James

No ones fault but the clubs (including Saints and Leeds) If the chairmen didn't have their own self interest at heart then the game could have moved forward instead of standing still.

NO they are not.

if you look at the BARB website you ill see that the Rah Ra figures are at best similar.

Rugby League has admittedly gone down but the Rah Rah certainly hasn't gone up. Who wants to tune in and watch a load of blokes kick the ball into touch for 80 minutes !

I did get my figures from BARB. 80k for super league the past 2 weeks. 142k for the aviva premiership, which is even more impressive given that there are less subscribers to BT sport than Sky Sports.

You obvsioulsy havent watched union recently. The days of kicking into touch vanished circa 2004. The game is much more skilful and exciting than rugby league is these days. But as the esteemed hull kr fan said above, its the chairmens fault for letting our game stagnate

Regards

King James

BT sport happens to be free to a lot of users whereas Sky Sport certainly isn't as you have to pay the nancy ballers. Big difference that.

Touch kicking may have declined in yawnion but its being replaced by a pile of fat chaps, where one wobbles a couple of yards, falls down and the pile up forms again. Keep repeating and going nowhere until finally one of the multitude of rules is broken and we get a penalty kick. Real skilful and exciting, its a poor game getting worse because its far too easy to stop the opposition playing unless there is a horrendous mismatch in ability.