Tommygilf

Calm down pet.

The traditional looking Hummel kits have been pretty nice, classics even. The non traditional ones, less so... It seems in RL we get manufacturers in bursts. Everyone had ISC, then X Blades came along with Kappa, then ONiells and now Hummel and Oxen. I do wonder if its just the same people making the shirts just operating under different licenses and word of mouth spread from various chairmen!

This also does well to give context to this

Its not the same though is it. If the FA said we're boycotting the Qatar World Cup, players from or representing every other nation wouldn't be prevented from going. I see you've taken the kidding yourself option.

That would all be fantastically true if the sabotage plan was limited to Australians and Kiwis. Because that failed to collapse the World Cup as they had hoped, the NRL and its clubs turned to pressuring the players of other nations and the Indigenous squads into not going. Much in the same way they did over the England vs Kiwis game in Denver. Again, for people so concerned with "player welfare", it is truly shocking that the RLPA stated they weren't even asked prior to the Kiwi and Kangaroo withdrawal. Its almost like it has nothing to do with player welfare! If you believe this is anything but self interested NRL sabotage, you're kidding yourself.

The world cup drama may well have woken the Australians up to the fact that not only are the majority of their competition now qualified to play for other nations, they are willing to actually play for those nations instead of Australia too.

Who could blame him? More money more profile regular high profile internationals (he could even play for France).

A sovereign nation who tells other sovereign nations what to do??? They've clearly been told by their PR people that they need to spin this as those brits telling us independent Australians what to do.

Indeed! As exemplified by the Australian Cricket team!

It needs strategy. If we want England to play 8 international games a season, with at least 1 in London, 1 in Leeds, and 1 outside the heartlands it requires a strategy (to get the opposition if nothing else). If we want Super League to be an elite competition it needs strategy. If we want the WF postcode to have a single stadium worthy of Super League, it requires a strategy. If we want France to have representation in Super League it needs strategy. Hand to mouth, short termist, sleepwalking from issue to issue decision making is not strategy. Our sport is simply not big enough to take the potential hits a random sporting model can present.

Numerous public statements, a call for an Indigenous side, and Tom Burgess postponing his wedding? Not to mention the RLPA saying categorically that they weren't consulted. This makes it the total opposite of the Ashes where the board want to go but the players are saying no.

The England players want the cricket postponed. The Australian Clubs wanted the RLWC postponed. Pretty important distinction.

My expectations are low but I hope it does for the people who have put work into this.

Absolutely

They'll be in their 15th lockdown this year probably...

Who shows the premier league in Australia? Because when they show full crowds with no restrictions in the stadiums the world cup should have been played in...

Sad but true

Absolutely. There will be a time soon in Australia where someone writes a book about people who look like Phil Gould, Peter V'landys and Mr Cleary telling people who look like Villame Kikau, Jason Taumololo and Josh Addo-Carr to shut up and do what they are told. It'll be a footnote example of an even wider problem of what people in power do when people they think they know better than disobey them.

I'd go down to Australia on a 3 match tour, get them to pay for it. Big post world cup apology. Insist on the full bells and whistles - first class treatment. Then after we sang GSTQ at the opening game I'd have us walk off and get on the first plane out of there.

The Australia and NZ teams were used as proxy however by the NRL. They were shocked when the likes of Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Lebanon, PNG and the Cook Islands, amongst others, did not immediately follow suit. It demonstrates the sheer arrogance of these people that they believe Aus and NZ can beckon these other nations to heel without even explicitly telling them - or perhaps the NRL forgot they exist altogether? They then started intimidating their employees, the players, over playing for the national governing bodies they hadn't used as a front.

That is an absolutely fantastic article.

I wonder why there is no calendar?? Hmm why could that be?? Hmmm?? I'm sure there was after 2017. I wonder why the whole planned calendar was changed in 2019? Who could have decided that?

Its already failing commercially in the north of England - that ship I fear has sailed. We're already talking of going down to just 10 professional teams. The World Cup really could have been the shot in the arm the sport here (and indeed in the rest of the world) so desperately needed. That has been sabotaged unilaterally by 16 NRL clubs. I can't wait for a time where they can't exist in blissful ignorance that the rest of the world exists.

Should probably be some good will events at the arenas and stadiums that we can use too.

Super League based opponents to play England? Wales, Ireland, France, Jamaica Scotland at a push. Of those I reckon its France and Ireland tied at the top for the toughest fixtures.