Quote ="cadoo"Not how I see it.
I don't understand how England thrashing France once a year mid way through a season improves either nation. England don't get a challenge and so you don't really learn enough from the match. France struggle to gain interest, as the French people will not be interested in watching France get hammered in a one off test in June every year. Plus I don't see what their squad gains from it. The whole event needed addressing and rectifying with a viable alternative & I think this may be it.
I would still like to see France play a test. A build up match before the England v Overseas match between France & Wales would be an excellent idea. We have a welsh team and a french team so it includes every team in Super League. Wales get the opportunity to prepare for the four nations and France will play in a competitive match.
From an England perspective we will get a much sterner challenge and the game subsequently has more appeal to supporters. I've never seen England get out of third gear against France & they've still won very comfortably. As hopeless as Steve McNamara is, he isn't going to learn a lot about his players because England wont be facing opposition like this when they play New Zealand and Australia. At least this game will tell us more about the team. I also disagree with people saying we wont be competitive or will get hammered, you must remember our lads come up against these Super League players every week in their respective positions. A win would give our lads a huge confidence boost. Nevertheless, even if England lost, I don't think it would be a particularly bad thing. At least we've had a competitive match. The whole event has much more appeal to me as a supporter than the test match against France.
I hope the RFL go through with it and look forward to the event.'"
Just a few years back, the Kiwi's were getting pummelled by the roos, now they're world number ones, if they'd been told to go back to playing PNG for example would this be so? As someone else said, one of the biggest problems the French have is their coaching infrastructure imho. but you could say that about England
