I didn't suggest England should play Scotland, Ireland or Wales.
I said England should play mid season games against France and then New Zealand. These are the best teams who are likley willing to play us. A stand alone mid season game against Austrailia is sadly a pipe dream.

Nobody would be interested in probables v possibles, I certainly wouldn't be buying a ticket and traveling to the game. Origin is unique to Austrailia and works for them, this is because RL is mostly played in 2 states, the Aussies are passionate about the state they come from so get behind their side and the players see it as a rep side. Like England and Wales both been part of the UK and people support them in sporting events. Sadly Wales aren't good enough to be competitive with England. It makes no sense to try and replicate something like origin where it doesn't exist.

Australia has the money and media profile to push the international game forwards if it wants to. It was they who were the main culprits in the reduction in internationals and tours anyway with their NFL-like obsession with their own league.

I agree with that mentioned above about a mid-season international comp v France etc. I don't know about going down under for 1 game. I think that's a lot of expense for not much when we'll be more than likely be playing NZ at the end of the season anyway.

I get the point about France and the other nations not being up to standard but I think we have to start somewhere. And give France a dedicated, set in stone, international structure and I think they'll improve as will Wales.
It's getting a set calendar, year on year that is vital to getting the international teams to develop and improve.

I've said it before but I'd like to see a set international calendar of:
Year 1: 5 Nations alternating between here and down under. (Big 3 plus Wales & France when held here, top 2 Pacific nations when held down under)

Year 2: GB tour. Alternate between Australia and NZ. 3 match series.

Year 3: England Test Series. Alternate opponents between Australia and NZ. 3 match series

Year 4: World Cup

Plus an annual mid-season European Championship involving England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and France. And ideally an annual mid-season Pacific Championship involving Australia, New Zealand, PNG, Samoa & Fiji.

I think that regular format would revolutionise international RL in both hemispheres. It'd show all those countries that we take internationals seriously.

One thing that might get the Aussies more interested in Internationals is if we start beating them again. Hopefully that will start in November and they will sit up and take notice during the NZ -England final when they are confirmed the number 3 ranked nation in the World

Depends if the refs pull them out of the sh|t again like last time when exactly that should have happened.

Historical revisionism at its finest.

We were responsible for the reduction in internationals and tours with the switch to summer seasons since 1996.

There hasn't been any proper international tours since.

If anyone's the revisionist it's you.

Was it the '98 tour that was cancelled due to the Super League War? And it was the Aussies who truncated the 2001? tour to being just the 3 test matches by using 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan as some kind of excuse for missing out the club games.

Income Streams
Player Quality
Participation
Game Intensity
Match Officials
Sports Funding
Sponsor Revenues and Quality
Fanbase
Media Output
Player Skills
Weekend Matches
Away Support
u/23 development teams
Disciplinary Consistency
Stadia Ownership

The way forward is Toulouse, Toronto, Avignon and Montreal within the next 6 years, with Paris and Vancouver to follow.

If Nigel "Dominos" Wood insists that they all waste their collective times climbing the divisional ladder, then so be it. That process is of course a massive waste of time and resources. Licencing is the only efficient method of expanding. Nevertheless, if rugby league takes off in Toulouse and Toronto and Montreal then it will be a success, albeit an inefficient one.

But until we have several teams from France and Canada in Super League, we cannot hope to attract the USA cities.

If Canadian teams take off, using local NFL discards with a handful of English, Australian and Kiwi players, then the USA will follow fast.

If Toulouse alongside Catalans in Super League can ignite more French interest in rugby league, then other French cities will follow based upon rich benefactors and rugby union defectors.

I think France and french speaking Canada should form there own competition to take advantage of the rich benefactors and union defectors you speak of.

OMG. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

What sort of planet are you on its not Earth thats for sure you are

While we all take Jean's posts with a large helping of salt, I think he does have a salient point, that being if we want the game to develop both on and off the pitch, we need to expand into new, bigger markets, which in turn can lead to increased revenue and player pools. You would hope this would also help the international game.

The game will not move forward in the M62 corridor, because there is a finite amount of resources (players) fans and revenue, which is competed for often by 2/3 clubs in the same area.

[u
Super League in 2030, if licencing was reinstated[/u:

European Conference:

[iLeeds,
Hull FC
Hull KR
Huddersfield
Bradford
Wigan
St. Helens
Warrington
Calder United
Sheffield
Coventry
West London
East London
Cardiff

Catalans
Toulouse
Avignon
Paris
Lyon
Mille[/i


North American Conference:

[iToronto
Montreal
Vancouver
Winnipeg
Calgary
Ottawa


New York
Boston
Philadelphia
Washington
Atlanta
Jacksonville
Chicago
Dallas
Houston
Denver
Phoenix
Seattle
San Francisco
Los Angeles
[/i


August-September, top 4 in each conference meet in North Atlantic playoffs. Late September you have semi finals and grand final.

Alternatively playoffs in each conference for the Conference Grand Final. Then the two conference winners play the North Atlantic Grand Final.

Fantastic.
Forget 2030.
Lets be on with it now.

Got to be the biggest load of poppycock ever spouted on RLFans.

This part I agree with. It makes no sense making Toronto waste millions of pounds paying to fly over to play Hemel Oxford and Gloucster University, plus pay for those teams to go and play in Canada. It will benefit nobody but cost a shed load of money, just to try and legitamise their inclusion to a few flat cap supporters.

If the RFL think it's a good thing to have a Toronto based team in the leagues, (and I'm not saying it isn't a good thing) they should have grown a pair and placed them straight into super league or the championship at an absolute minimum.

If nothing else it has exposed the hypocrisy of certain anti-expansioners who argued tooth and nail that putting Toulouse in the championship was unfair on the championship sides, not to mention their numerous criticisms aimed at Crusaders.

In reality when it has boiled down to it, when it is their club wanting to spend massively and adversely affect the competitiveness of the league it was perfectly reasonable, where their club has, by hook or by crook, filled their squad with overseas players its a reasonable measure to try and get promoted, and when its the clubs in the league below them taking the hit from expansion clubs affecting the competitiveness of that league, its all perfectly fine.

At least now it is unarguable that those claiming to be fighting for the grass-roots of the game, really didnt give a fig about anything outside their tiny fiefdom.

Under licencing with clubs competing against each other the sport is better served with comparable salary caps for all clubs , we didn't have this with the Celtic Crusaders as they somehow managed to run a full time squad initially on a £ 150 K cap in NL2 and then a £ 250K cap in NL 2

Toulouse actually suffered because they stuck to the cap which was less than what some clubs were spending in Elite 1

We now have a system where clubs have to play , and defeat SL clubs on a 1.8 million cap , so for this system to work , something had to give , unfortunately that has been the competitiveness in the Championship

The answer ? , not 100% sure , but yet to see anybody that has it either

How can you say something like that? Your judgments strike me as sweeping and extreme.

This 100%

I really struggle to understand the vehement opposition to expansion. Rugby League's a great game, the greatest many would say, what better than to have it played and talked about the length and breadth of the country, plastered across the media.

What ' Vehement opposition ' ?

Find me a post on any discussion on this subject where there is vehement opposition to expansion of RL ?

I think legitamising a club by making them go through the ranks could be a very good process. People may buy into the idea more if the club has earned it's stripes rather than just been plonked in to the top because of who they are and where they're from.

Yes, they will hammer through the leagues at the start, but that's sport. Significant investment lower down a system causes that to happen in any game. Throwing them in at the top just doesn't sit right with a lot of the fans of our game, or sports fans in this country in general.

Let's see how it pans out before inevitably in true rugby league fashion we just slag it off!

I concur

But, again this is an entirely 'flatcap-centric' viewpoint.

To an expansion club there is no question of their legitimacy to them or their fans. Toulouse fans arent going to be congratulating themselves on 'earning legitimacy' from a minority of fans from the north of England.

Those people who didnt 'buy in to London' because at some point in their history they didnt get promoted through a convoluted system, didnt actually matter to london, they werent london fans, and they werent ever going to be london fans, because the only people it ever mattered to were a small minority of northern people protecting their own self-interest, not the people of london.


The question of legitimacy would only ever be posed by a heartland fan, it would never enter anyone elses head.