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Covid is much more contagious for RL players.

My RL viewing on Sundays is always limited by my involvement in Anglican choral music also. Nice to come across another fan of Howells, Stanford, etc!

With the borders of Australia and NZ both sealed I think the plans never got off the ground.

This aways happens, a French renaissance is hyped-up and then the Chanticleers deliver a terrible performance. Rugby League may be on the up in France, but it is starting from a situation much more dire than many realise.

There are regional qualifiers to assure each continent is represented. Korea won the Asian qualifier while France did not make it through Europe.

Almost everything you have said here about basketball is incorrect. Basketball is the second most popular sport in the world routinely being the second sport behind football. The NBA is in fact just as dominated by European players now, all the leading candidates for MVP this season were European players - Doncic, Antetokounmpo, Jokic and France just defeated the USA at the Olympics. If basketball is deemed not competitive enough to have a World Cup then Rugby League really shouldn't have a World Cup.

Baksetball has a fairly big World Cup in fact - 24 teams with most of the best players showing up. A USA squad full of NBA players was knocked out in the quarterfinals such was the competitiveness of the tournament.

France offers a true opportunity for legitimate growth and should be one of the main focuses of the international game. I find all of this much more exciting than wondering which Australians are going to be playing for Scotland at the next World Cup.

What if the ball carrier stayed at the front of the maul and the joining players were all behind the ball?

I am curious why teams never employ rolling mauls in Rugby League? Are they illegal? I often think when a ball runner gets tackled close to the try line that they would have made it over had a few of his team mates piled in and driven him over. We see mauls used as a form of defence when multiple players drive a ball runner backwards, what's to stop multiple players driving a ball runner forwards? I get that you wouldn't want to obstruct offloads, but if a player is close to the try line surely it would be a good tactic to commit to a maul and aim to drive the ball runner over the line. I am wondering if someone much more knowledgable than I could explain why mauls would be a bad idea from an attacking standpoint.

The Northern Eagles still played games at Manly though. Also one or two at North Sydney.

They tried that, it was called the Northern Eagles and nobody liked it. You may as well merge Wigan and St Helens if you are going to merge the Bears and Sea Eagles.

The big issue is player recruitment. It is hard enough to get players to move over to Auckland, let alone Wellington or Christchurch. Jahrome Hughes, who is a Kiwi, just rejected big money from the Warriors to remain at the Storm. And it is pretty clear that a team of only New Zealand players can't compete, the Warriors have always done best with some Australian grit thrown in.

As a New Zealander, I think a second NRL team in the country would be madness. There isn't the corporate money for the team to be competitive. Perth would be a much better option I reckon. Outside of Auckland, Rugby League has nothing more than a moderate following and certainly has little money behind it.

I honestly don't know why the multi-sport model hasn't caught on. It seems to make financial sense as die hard fans will show up to support the other sport teams even if it isn't their preferred sport. Barcelona for example have football, basketball, handball, rink hockey, ice hockey, field hockey, rugby, and many other other sport teams.