Dave T

I think you're right. I think it was pointed out a couple of years back that this game lost money and was an investment to give England a game, and I expect we've reached the point that they have decided to pull it. Particularly when you look at how the French treated it as an anniversary event last year and staged it as a Featherstone pre season game. My personal preference is to try and do things as well s you can before deciding they don't work, but they seem a bit incapable of that. It is always a challenging game with Catalans and has been for years. I expect RLCom and the French Federation have decided they haven't the funds to make this work.

That seems to be quite a simplistic reading of events. Do you honestly think Wane has chosen zero instead of playing France? He has stated he would prefer Roses, something I disagree with him on, but I expect as a coach he would prefer something to nothing. I expect the decision has been taken above him that they aren't staging this, and I expect France have something to do with this too.

Source? Did France want to play a match? Because it didn't look like it this year.

Who wanted to play England?

I think this is where focusing on getting lower ranked teams into tournaments is important. Whether that's Four Nations, 6N, World Cup's whatever. France are clearly better in these tournaments, and they are more commercially attractive too. I find it a shame that we have reduced the World Cup, which gave a cha ce for more lower ranked teams to play at the top table, which is how WC's should be. Personally I'd play France mid-season only in France, reduce the travel for their Catalans players who travel every week, and work together to sell it well - we've seen plenty of positive signs in France.

Vaughan's been given the number 10 shirt, it would be odd for him to leave for another SL club. The media talk is of him returning to the NRL though. I'd be very happy to keep him. I think he goes about his business nicely rather than being a big play player.

France aren't a good opponent or a good partner for a mid-season test. They struggle to get a competitive team out, have shown they stage worse events than the RFL, and it does have an unfair impact on Catalans. It's the reason the RFL have tried Roses, Exiles, playing Oz and Samoa in Sydney, the Kiwis in Denver and St Helens, as well as Tests against France. If I understand it correctly, the season dates clearly factored in an international window, yet no game is being delivered, so the SL clubs are splitting a round over two weekends.

Since 2008 when England became the primary team, we've played France 16 times. We've played Australia 11 times. We've played the Kiwis 17 times. In reality, Wales are a few levels below, and Scotland and Ireland are not really things. They aren't gonna be great RL events on the field or commercially. It's not to say they shouldn't be part of a worldwide calendar that may see the odd game, particularly in tournaments, but you aren't growing the game staging those fixtures. For the same reason the Aussies aren't playing Cook Islands, and have never even played Fiji outside of a World Cup. This is a reason that World Cups are important, it was the balance for these nations to get on that world stage. England need to be playing Top 8 teams more often.

Yep. When people talk about all the groundwork that has been done with the Pacific Nations it doesn't deal in reality. They hardly played for nearly 20 years.

If we look at the Top nations and compare to, say 2016: 2016 2024 Aus 6 3 NZ 6 3 Eng 5 3 Sco 3 2 Wal 3 2 Fiji 2 2 Lebanon 2 0 Tonga 1 3 Fra 1 3 PNG 1 3 Samoa 1 2 Cook Island 1 2 Nobody was looking at 2016 and saying - "you know what this needs? fewer games from the top 3 teams". If you just eyeball that list on the left - your natural aim would be to bring those at the bottom of the list up to the ones at the top. This just isn't a serious international sport.

To explain my point further licensing as a 'thing' was fine, but not inplemented well, so im not saying the licensing period went well. We kept the benchmark too low, tried to crowd please by guaranteeing a new club, extending to 14 too early etc. But the principle of it was fine. For example, the things that we have seen implemented could work in the licensing framework. I would also add that whilst you say nothing changed during licensing, I'm not sure I'd say too much has happened here so far. A lot of the score improvements so far have been via jiggery-pokery with finances behind the scene. I would say nip back and look at those licensing seasons, they had bigger crowds than now, and many bigger events in-season, and new facilities being used.

I think its the official party line tbh that basically keeps all of this in a box. In every exciting article and quote, it is tempered with that line.

I do think we have a bit of a fundamental challenge here in that I just don't think we have really set out the problem that we are trying to fix with grading. This ultimately is a change to P&R mechanics, that's the difference between two years ago and now. If we look at some of the criticisms of auto P&R, one of the key ones is that clubs invest in on-field only and are a shell of a club really. London Broncos illustrated this perfectly. That will now be prevented. They've come in to SL twice in recent years, lost most games and gone straight back down, bringing little to the comp. In effect this brings some minus standards in, as if you aren't at a certain level off the field you won't be allowed in. That feels like it addresses a genuine issue. Other issues that are raised though are around the shock that P&R brings to a club as a whole, with the huge shift in funding and turnover. Yet this doesn't appear to have been addressed. The 12m cycle offers no certainty, even if you are an A grade club it turns out. Ultimately you could score well, strengthen yourselves as a club, make long term decisions, but miss out when they are announced and you have that club shock again. It's less transparent than standard p&r as you only know your own score. We then have the challenge that clubs struggle to recruit a strong team following promotion, yet this does nothing to address that issue. You could argue that it does in fact encourage overspending in the Championship as you look to build a team at the lower level that can step up, not unlike Leigh, Toronto and Wakefield have, but then we see with Fev how that can work the other way. I also feel we are unnecessarily bringing 3rd division clubs into this, with metrics that aren't necessarily appropriate at that level. I'm only seeing one point addressed here, and it's one that could easily have been addressed through strong minimum standards. Whilst I'm supportive of letting this play out, and certainly supportive of the wider involvement of expertise through IMG, I can't help that the execution of Grading leaves a lot to be desired (and I don't mean the criteria). It genuinely feels like a poorer version of licensing.

I take your point, however if a team is 4 points behind other teams playing in the same division, that is an indicator of their strength as a club. Many clubs were able to strengthen their scores this year from the indicative grading, that isn't gonna be possible every time. I think it is flawed in assuming that weak clubs will easily be able to add 4 or so points from one season in SL. London were relatively unique in that they were a bit of a basket case in the first place. The only way that this kind of proposal could begin to work is if the bar for a Grade B was substantially raised to around that 12.5 mark anyway where the top Championship clubs are playing. But even then, it undermines the grading system.

A club 4 or 5 points below other clubs shouldn't leapfrog those clubs because they won a final.

If we look at 2001 to 2017, they played a minimum of 5 Test matches on 13 occasions. The years where they didn't was when they had their 'rest' years and only played one or two games. If we exclude World Cup's - they played 5+ games in 10 out of 14 years. in 2016 they played 6 matches, I think people have genuinely forgotten how much progress had been made with the development of regular Tri/Four nations and World Cups. Kangaroos games by year (*denotes WC year): 2017 7 * 2016 6 2015 1 2014 5 2013 7 * 2012 2 2011 6 2010 5 2009 5 2008 6 * 2007 2 2006 6 2005 7 2004 8 2003 8 2002 2 2001 5

Hull FC really have been a bit of a basket case for a good few years now, it would be brilliant if they could start to fulfil some of that potential. They really should be right up there challenging the very best.

It doesn't need to be either/or. We can have the Kangaroos committing to 5-7 tests a year as they have for large parts of this century and still have huge tests involving Tonga. You seem to have been taken in by the Aussie mindset. And 3 of those 7 Pacific teams didn't play three tests this year.

1. Grading is either a thing or it isn't. Ignoring personal preferences, the sport has decided to decide SL places by a ranking system, which already bakes in on-field performance. If you give a place because somebody has won a Championship Grand Final irrespective of score, then you have basically repeated the London issue. Because if a weak club goes up, they are guaranteed to go down again at the end of that season just like London. The only way this stuff works if if you pretty much scrap grading. They can't really be crashed together. 2. I actually disagree. Much of the 'interests about London was driven by your owner keep repeating himself because of his beef with Hull FC, publications like this just keep recycling Mike Eccles please to be kept in SL. In reality, most people were focusing on the top end of the table. 3. Nobody has any protection under the current system. Technically any club could exit SL at the end of the 2025 season.

It was the craziest scenario I could come up with

I think if your first paragraph is true, and i don't disagree, then we just leave it as is and crack on.

Yeah. Speaking generally, the players do put their hand up to play.

yeah, I think things like this are what would make it workable, but I'm not sure it would be strong enough for Champ clubs to be happy as they ultimately dont have any control over this P&R. And would this sit alongside the standard grading piece?

Yup. They basically have control of all of the strongest RL nations with the exception of England. None of these nations are doing anything without the NRL controlling it. The Kiwis dared to try and do their own thing, partnering with the RFL, and Denver was the final act of insubordination that the Aussies would take. Since then, they have absolutely been pulled back in line. We now see a campaign of negging towards the England game, so much so that the takeover of the English game by the Aussies is on the agenda and would be happy-clapped through by many.

Yes, and in fact, an A club could too. But we know that it is your club ranking that does this. So if you get replaced, it is basically because you have done the exact thing that you shouldn't (spent your money on the pitch as opposed to strengthening your club both on and off the field). The issues isn't around getting relegated from 6th in itself, it is getting relegated from 6th by a far weaker club because we've decided that on-field performance trumps everything else - which is something that directly contradicts grading.