RP London

The point being when Cunningham, Briers, Atcheson, Joynt etc all chose Great Britain was the regular side with the home nations playing separately in a world cup and a euro nations when GB were playing.. as such it didnt really matter what home nation they put their hands up for if they weren't that bothered about winning a world cup and saw winning as GB as more important.. arguably winning an ashes serious was prized higher. you're comparing apples with oranges as it was a different set of circumstances. It was partly this that meant GB got scrapped and I was all for that. Frizzel is a different case as that is down to the elligability rules that allow you to swap nations once you have played which is wrong and you wont get an argument from me about that but it has nothing to do with GB.

I agree it should be one country for life, but to be fair thats only enforceable once they pull on the shirt. But all you are doing is moving the argument to a different place in time.. its not the coercing to change nationality but it may affect the decision when you have to chose which nation you want to represent.. If Rhys Evans had a GB shirt as a possibility 5 years ago (or whenever it was he put his hand up for England) do we really think he would have said I want to play for England instead of Wales?

emboldened the main bit... sorry I wasnt at any point having a pop.. my point was that clubs need the fall back people which is why running it out of a union club is normally the way people go but you had already said you had 40+ people signed up so was saying that this was great and well done and meant you didnt need the union club which is good.. sorry if it came across as anything else. Forgive me but I have deleted much of your quote except the first and last line so that people can find it further back if they want, otherwise my post could take up the whole page and that would be pointless. First, I am by no means speaking for Number 16 and I apologies to Number 16 if he was being rude... however so that you know him and where a lot of his comments are coming from I have known Number 16 for a long time and he is very knowledgeable and passionate about the game in London, if we had 100 of him the game would be in a good state down there, and believe me I have had the odd argument with him over a beer but we have made up by the next round especially if it was me buying! he may be abrupt but he also has seen many many people come give their "two penneth" do nowt and p*ss off then start whinging that it will never work unless they do it their way... so to be fair his comments come from love of the game but also "been there seen it done it".. but without him Storm wouldnt have happened and nor would the Brixton Bulls.. as such there would be a number of past and present pro players not playing the game and a few people that would probably not still be on the streets with a family of their own right now (and I'm not over playing this at all). With regards your ideas.. yes they may well work but as you say it depends what the club wants to do, after all it is their club. equally I would point out that what works for one does not work for another necessarily so although you can say "that fine but it an approach I know works" yes maybe for 1 club or 2 clubs but not for all clubs. For all you know they may have done all of what you suggest but for one reason or another have not gone down that path.. this happens a lot, those from outside start giving their "ideas" but they dont actually know the intricacies of what has/hasnt happened, why and when etc. we've all sat on these boards and pontificated about clubs.. some of us have run some of them.. what you tend to find works best is if you actually talk to them.. if you have ideas that might work and you whack them on here you open yourself up to ridicule and abuse from people who dont agree with you (thats the way of the world sadly) and especially from people who have given a large part of their life to Rugby League clubs sometimes as the 1 and only person keeping them going, and having someone on a message board saying your doing it wrong you should do it like this with no indepth knowledge of the club is, frankly, insulting. I take on board your inability to physically help out but contact the club, if you have done it before etc then you have insight.. give them, not this message board, your insight.. find out what exactly it is they want to do with the club and help them with your knowledge. All of these clubs are run by amateurs who have other jobs so all fitting it around something and you give as much as you can time wise. Offer "what you can" even if it is advice on the other end of a phone or a meet up at your house one evening for a conversation, introduction to people you know etc.. sometimes this is all it needs.. (taking one job off a very busy man can be saving the "break point" from happening) (without wanting to be the grammar police as my posts certainly arent great but any chance you could type the word "and" instead of "n" as its hard to read and not make you sound like an 18 year old on an old Nokia phone).

don't disagree with any of that (cant really as not there anymore). my point on players and the league at a union club was that you need a base of players to call upon as you need a good 40+ to run 1 team with holidays, injuries etc and a union club is a good back up or reserve of players initially without having to do too much.. what you have done is build that group already and so you hopefully will be able to work without the automatic fall back which I applaud and is the ideal I would say. With regards the geography again I dont disagree that geography is important but people will still travel to go to a good club that offers something they want so as Bob8 says its about finding the group to tap into and finding how to tap into that group to make them/encourage them to travel that bit further without just thinking "i am in x area so those are the people I should be targetting" as that may not get you anywhere and limits your potential appeal and audience. I wish you all the luck and hope you do great things, my years at Storm were some of the best I ever had on and off the pitch and made some great friends for life and Number 16 always want clubs in London to do well.

It isn't instead of because it is a tour every 4 years.. it is in addition to. Rhys Evans put his hand up to be English when he thought he had a chance of playing he could have had a number of good years making a Welsh team better instead of trying to get in the England side... if GB had existed at that time then perhaps he would have done so. As for your middle paragraph that is unbelievable when you have typed what you have... why would any "Englishman" want to do that.. maybe it is people with dual nationality who want to make a choice that doesnt damage their chances of playing against the best?

Totally agree.. If you only have England then you have Welshmen and Scots and Irish who may well put their hands up for England as that is the only way they can play the big boys (outside of a world cup draw being favourable). With GB they can stay in their country of choice with another chance every 4 years if their form merits it.. that helps GB be stronger than just England (or at worse it is just England) but it definitely means the other nations are stronger for it and can help develop the game, if only with knowledge, in their country. Doesnt necessarily mean amateur club growth (though it might) but may make youngsters seek the game out and it can slowly build. Either way I dont really see any harm in it for any nation, though I do in not having it for the lesser home nations.

Sorry John have to disagree with this. Though I do agree that it was "taken out of context" in that he didn't post the link (thanks for doing that so I could read the whole article) and didn't give credit for the quote. Having read the article I can see the OPs point. While it is a discussion piece (though seems to be that it is a bit of a filler piece rather than discussion piece) the paragraph highlighted all of a sudden just gives an opinion, not given before. Its a short article just recapping, frankly, the obvious options available. No real in depth look at them but asking for people to discuss them on the forum.. to be honest it looks like a post that should have started here too.. but whatever floats your boat.. You, after all, are the ones in charge of making the publication work and I am not so I bow to your knowledge on this, just not my thing. The issue, I assume, the OP has is that all of a sudden "it's by far the least attractive option".. is it? who for? who says? If this is a discussion piece then surely that should have a question mark after it but it is stated as fact without any analysis or reasoning behind it. Franchising is a massive thing but it has huge upsides as well as tremendous downsides for different parties and in the British sporting landscape, but new sports tend to always use it, and some old sports have gone down the route without huge issues.. so why is it "by far the least attractive option"? Every other option has "It could", "it seems", "you suspect" after it.. all of which show an opinion but one open to question by phraseology. State it as an opinion or with caveats as you have with the other options it just seems to change its style halfway through. I think the OP has picked the wrong article but I do feel that it is symptomatic of some of the journalism in RL at the moment on a larger scale, the "big hitting" articles don't actually hit big there is no real questioning going on. I have to say that I am finding myself skipping through a lot of articles at the moment that should have been good but due to poor journalism or research just dont really add any new information or add anything to the experience... Just an opinion though.

Always love it when people go on an on about what a club could do better but have no intention of helping out. Do you remember the people coming down to Storm and expecting to get paid for being a "team manager" or even players expecting boot money? The perception of the size of club was ridiculous! Bit of a trip down memory lane with Elmbridge, was a good set up and they always did well. remember heading down their with Monty for the Junior teams think it may have been the first set of Junior game Powelley came along to as well. London is a funny beast and have to say I agree with Bob8 on this one, you can talk about location as much as you like but its about the people that you attract and aim at rather than the location. Yes the location has something to do with it as being miles away from anywhere isnt going to help but down at Thornton Heath we were attracting people from all over London. To start you need a supply of people that you can rely on which is why RU clubs are useful but if you have that in another way (sounds like the SIlverbacks might) then that is great. After that its Bob8's idea that needs to develop, find the type of people to aim at and get the word out into those communities, and to be fair that may be football fans but its people not geography that make it work in the end. Something I think that caused Storm to have issues too I believe, a whole heap of a team "retiring" at a similar time plus movement away from a base, there were some good people around S&C RUFC and they would always help out, to lose that type of network is damaging. I may be wrong as I was one of the "retirees" in 2007 but it was my feeling talking to a few people involved at the time.

So they come over for a block in 2018 then those that qualify to the one off match come over again once in 2019... or it all happens in 2018 as it really isnt going to be many matches.. 3 groups of 4/5 top 2 each group go through, done on seedings, all play 2018 autumn The whole World Cup Qualifiers is a massive mountain out of a molehill with added red herring.. it is going to be relatively simple to organise with minimum of fuss.

Fair enough.. well in that case that is sorted... With regards the qualifiers though I would say that assuming one of the "Europe" places is Englands then that leaves 6 teams to qualify from Europe.. now correct me if I'm wrong but European nations are: Wales Ireland Scotland France Italy Lebanon (are they still classified as Europe)? Norway Sweden Germany Spain Serbia Belgium Russia Holland Am I missing someone? Its not beyond belief to say a few pre qualifying rounds for the smaller nations in 2018 and one off mid season internationals for a final qualifying match in 2019.. I dont think we need to get that het up about the WCQ I cant see any of the big teams missing out no matter what.. (not necessarily the point I know but its one worth making). They can certainly be fit in without the GB&I tour becoming an issue

The problem is is who qualifies as hosts and how many spots do the European teams get? They havent even decided on that yet.. have they announced how many teams will be in the world cup yet?? I agree its a messy situation but it is not caused by GB & I its caused by the World cups not being sorted properly.. which I would argue is 2 different issues, from the same body but 2 different issues.. until the above are sorted out you cannot sort out qualifying as you need to know the end numbers/make up of those teams to be able to work out how that pyramids to qualifying.

Your assuming here that no announcement is the equivalent to no thought. I would suggest that is probably not true and that the reason they havent announced it at the same time is that there is a lot of further thinking now to do. There was a lot of "needing a plan" and speculation about the lions so a basic announcement on Tier 1 matches needed to be made... you also need a start. now the Tier 1 plan is announced they can work with the Tier 2 nations on their plans and how that fits in, that will include the world cup qualifiers and as Matthewwoody has said there is a lot still open about 2021 re who is automatically qualifying etc which needs to be sorted.. It isnt ideal that they cant announce everything at once but to suggest there has been no thought is disingenuous I would say (though on past record I can understand where you are getting that from)

If you split as you suggest it is unlikely that I would go to any of them unless one was in Sheffield.. I like the Magic weekend because it is an overnight "lads weekend". I can see in years to come that when my son and daughter are old enough (to either drink or be able to carry me back to the hotel room) that they will come along as I am sure the kids of the others that I go with.. I wouldn't necessarily bother with the odd double header around the country to watch teams I don't really support. I go to the Grand Final because it is the Grand Final. I go to the Magic Weekend because it is the Magic Weekend.. i would potentially go to the Summer Bash if it wasn't so soon after the Magic Weekend and politically that would be tough. If you were to change it I liked the idea of the Magic Weekend becoming the last 16 of the Challenge Cup all being played in the one venue.. I think it would add more meaning to the game and open it up to smaller teams being there (obviously as there are only 12 Super League clubs).. And people may stay to see the team they are potentially going to face in the next round.. you could even do the draw on Saturday night or something. Then you lose the extra round of Super League matches which opens a gap somewhere else in the calendar for internationals.. On the road matches can happen still but I would keep this "event" going they just need to make it mean something.

To be fair there are plenty of people on this thread who would be more than happy for this situation to arise as it would mean "no plastic [insert nationality here]"... and only teams with "proper domestic players" would qualify... shows you cant please all the people all of the time.. (in fact some of the people some of the time seems nigh on impossible in Rugby League)

Yes IF there is a clash then it would be problematic and unacceptable and would shout of contempt for the smaller nations/world cup.. However, IF my auntie had balls she'd be my uncle.. as has been said there is enough in this life to get outraged about that is or has actually happened without getting outraged about something that hasn't and may never happen. There are plenty of alternative possibilities.. in fact at the moment the possibilities are endless.. qualifying could take many forms at many different times.. the implications of each some people would like some would not and some would be perfect.. but let them at least announce it first!