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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

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.

I hope they only promote teams that bring a sufficient number of away fans.

Excited for the return of Elite 1 this weekend!

That is absolutely a fair observation. Once you get past Wigan, Leeds, St. Helen's, Warrington, Catalans, and maybe Hull it does become tricky to seperate the men from the boys. Huddersfield and Leigh at least have good stadiums, which puts them ahead of Wakefield, Castleford, London, etc.

We could always consider following the lead of EuroLeague basketball and issue ten-year licenses to some clubs and then leave a few spots open to clubs on shorter license agreements. For example, the following clubs would be issued 10-year licenses, these teams would make up the core of the league and would be immune from relegation: Wigan St Helens Warrington Catalans Leeds Hull FC Huddersfield Toulouse Castleford Then issue shorter licenses to three-five other clubs dependent on their operations that can be renewed or revoked every three years. Using this

Quite a tense finish, well worth sticking with the game despite the poor conditions.

The big fear is that having 3-4 French sides in England competitions will decimate any local competitions in France. I'm not really sure what the best course of action is for the French game.

I have really enjoyed watching games from France. France truly is a rugby league heartland that is criminally neglected by the RL world.