But as far as I'm aware joint hosts in those other "sports" have always hosted neutral games, not just their own

I feel like I'm arguing against a point I actually agree with. Anything that increases attendances and drums up interest is fine by me

I would imagine the the largest factor holding back the idea of having matches in France is Sport England. I'm sure in any other tournament the RFL would agree wholeheartedly about France hosting a few games. But, this time around the tournament coincides with the 'Golden Decade of Sport', which is the government's effort to focus all sporting disciplines on hosting as many world sporting events as possible for the 10 years after the Olympics. Its all a drive to generate wealth and facilities in this country, and also improve on Britain's sporting and mega-event hosting image (e.g. Millenium Dome, RLWC 2000, Football Hooliganism etc).

Sport England provide RL with a substantial amount of money and, whether you like it or not, its thanks to Mr Richard Lewis who Chairs SE. SE is the reason why we've retired the GB team in favour of England et al (for funding). I would imagine SE is the reason why 2013 will be a British affair; they're aren't going to chuck a load of funding at the RFL if the RFL are going to chuck a chunk of it at France and we also can't seen to be reliant on French facilities during the 'Golden Decade'.

A fair point, and something that hadn't even crossed my tiny mind.

As far as Sport ENGLAND are concerned, would they not in fact be equally as perturbed to see the whole of the British Isles facilities being considered to host the RLWC2013 as they would be for France?

Better that money from the British tax payer is used in the British Isles than France I suppose. In reality I would imagine that only a few games in Wrexham will be played outside England. That's my theory anyway.

They will play a few in London surely? I'd imagine QPR would be used for the inevitable Aus v NZ group game? It would be one of only a handful of 5 figure crowds.

I'm sure they will, London is in England...

Although, wouldn't The Stoop be the primary choice for that match?

:9orpgnf6

Since when?





[Gives himself a telling off and promises to read posts before replying to them for once'"

QPR won't be interested...the billionaire owners would'nt want us "wrecking" the pitch

In football it's happened once. 2002, S. Korea/Japan.
It's also unlikely to happen again, there was talk of joint bids not being allowed anymore as a few FIFA high-ups (inc. Sepp Blatter, I think) aren't a fan of the idea, but so for nothing's been done about that (and Portugal/Spain had put in a joint bid for the 2018/2022 games, the last I'd heard).

For me, it should just be hosted in one country. This goes for football and RL.
It makes it more of an event within that country, and it gives that country a higher profile, and not that "you're not good enough to host it by yourself, you'll need some assistance".

Wembley

TB, maybe you need to have words with the French Federation, too. They were reportedly talking to Mille this week, about taking a 2013 world cup game to the velodrome. 60K capacity seems rather ambitious to me, but still.

What a way to start the WC by having the game at Wembley.If we going to treat it like a WC then Wembley is a must.

It's all to do with how much ambition we have. If we fill Wembley or the Olympic Stadium on the opening day, maybe a double header?, I reckon the WC will really kick off.

The next Euro Championships is being shared by Poland & Ukraine...hardly neighbours like England & Wales or even England & France,

:12kkngjl

Apart from the fact that they're right next door to each other, share a border and territory that is now Ukrainian was Polish between the 1920s and 1939.





[url=en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland–Ukraine_relationswiki link[/url'"

...Ukraine was part of the Polish Commonwealth...a couple of hundred years plus 1920's to 1939.

<pedant> Polish and Lithuanian Commonwealth

..we've played this game before...

It's one hell of a trek from one side of England to the other side of France, too

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