Possible French national team: could it compete with England?

[Manfred Mann]

Possible French national team (all Catalans except where indicated):

 

Morgan Escare (Wigan)

 

Fouad Yaha, Tony Gigot, Bastien Ader (Toulouse), Hakim Miloudi (Hull FC)

 

Theo Fages (St Helens), William Barthau (Toulouse)

 

Remi Casty, Eloi Pelissier (London), Julien Bousquet

Benjamin Garcia, Benjamin Jullien,

Jason Baiteiri

 

Interchange: Romain Navarette (Wigan), Antoni Maria, Thibault Margalet, Stan Robin (Toulouse)/Lucas Albert

 

This team should easily beat any of the home nations other than England. Could it compete with England? If not, is that not an argument for inviting more French teams with functioning junior structures, into Super League, in order to increase the professional player pool for France? My assumption, of course, which I share with Ian Lenagan, is that competitive international contests, not unequal ones, are very important for the financial health and popularity of the game. 

[Man of Kent]

Possibly. With a fair wind, playing at home and with the Burgess brothers not playing. But probably not, to be honest.

Perhaps more importantly, they need more games.

I ask myself what was the point of Scotland competing the last Four Nations?

Why did we chase that dream when France should always be the priority as the only other serious European nation? 

 

[RayCee]

2 minutes ago, Man of Kent said:

1) Possibly. With a fair wind, playing at home and with the Burgess brothers not playing. But probably not, to be honest.

2) Why have did we chase that dream when France should always be the priority as the only other serious European nation? 

 

1) if the Kiwis don’t make it to Denver in 2019, I'd like to see France replace them. Without some of the NRL players, England would be weakened. That would make it a close encounter.

2) Agreed. Scotland has not benefited from the opportunity whereas France would have. No brainer really, but this is RL.

[Abicus]

Whilst they may not win, they would be competitive and with that there becomes no excuse as to why England does not play France every single year in a home and away format.

[dixiedean]

Kheirallah, Simon?

[Wellsy4HullFC]

You all seem to forget that, although the would be a competitive side, take a few out for injury and there's not much in terms of depth.

Still need a few more bodies yet, and certainly a second SL side would help.

[Manfred Mann]

1 hour ago, dixiedean said:

Kheirallah, Simon?

Simon definitely. Crazy of me to forget him.

Kheirallah maybe, but I prefer French nationals, rather than just residency qualification eligible.

[MZH]

Define compete.

Can they cause England a few problems and play their part in an entertaining game? Yes

Can they realistically win? Probably not at this stage. Or at least if they did it would be an almighty upset. But thats ok, they are going in the right direction.

[Balmain1969]

The one positive I can see here is that we have actually made it to the point where this is a conversation, not long ago Eng v France was nothing more than Professionals v Part Timers. Toulouse in Super League plus more French players into other Super League squads will hopefully give France the depth they need to start competing on the big stage, if France can be competitive against England then they should look at building a regular mid year fixture, even if it doesn't include NRL based players.

[roughyedspud]

4 hours ago, Abicus said:

Whilst they may not win, they would be competitive and with that there becomes no excuse as to why England does not play France every single year in a home and away format.

The excuse is France,more specifically Catalan,don't want to play England mid season...

Also the French team is lazy..

[B rad]

38 minutes ago, Balmain1969 said:

The one positive I can see here is that we have actually made it to the point where this is a conversation, not long ago Eng v France was nothing more than Professionals v Part Timers. Toulouse in Super League plus more French players into other Super League squads will hopefully give France the depth they need to start competing on the big stage, if France can be competitive against England then they should look at building a regular mid year fixture, even if it doesn't include NRL based players.

France could do themselves a massive favor if they kicked most of the Aussies/Kiwis out of their clubs and replaced them with French players. Would make a huge difference to the national team. The club sides might struggle a bit to start with but after a time would adjust and once again become competitive. Hopefully the sponsors would stick around long enough for that to happen. 

[Oliver Clothesoff]

Absolutely not. Next question? 

[Hvy wg]

Gigot cant be moved from fullback.

Marguerite and Ader as centres. 

 

[UniSamX]

1 hour ago, Hvy wg said:

Gigot cant be moved from fullback.

Marguerite and Ader as centres. 

 

Is Ader the big white dude who played in the centres at the World Cup? Because that guy had a very, very poor tournament

[Random tiger]

I saw the French while they were in Australia. I thought they had skill and speed but lacked the size to compete with the top three. With Catalan and Toulouse going well this is the great news story for the game. Those bigger players will come along if the money is there. Go the French 

[DavidM]

Do any  French union guys ever get mentioned or linked with moving code ? That’s a huge pool 

[Hvy wg]

48 minutes ago, DavidM said:

Do any  French union guys ever get mentioned or linked with moving code ? That’s a huge pool 

From top 14/Pro D2 never. They get more money for less work in Union.

Toulon juniors are all from Union and despite the lack of League-ness in them, they walked over most sides because they're big and strong.

 

[Hvy wg]

2 hours ago, UniSamX said:

Is Ader the big white dude who played in the centres at the World Cup? Because that guy had a very, very poor tournament

Yes and he's still the best centre we have.

[Wellsy4HullFC]

6 hours ago, B rad said:

France could do themselves a massive favor if they kicked most of the Aussies/Kiwis out of their clubs and replaced them with French players. Would make a huge difference to the national team. The club sides might struggle a bit to start with but after a time would adjust and once again become competitive. Hopefully the sponsors would stick around long enough for that to happen. 

No, what would happen would be the standard would drop incredibly, the young players wouldn't reach a very high standard as they'd be playing in a lower level competition, clubs would struggle to fill their squads as there aren't currently enough players in France and ultimately the comp would go down the pan.

This "fill 'em with locals" line is just a myth. It won't necessarily give you a better elite squad. There needs to be a mixture.

[Hvy wg]

Just now, Wellsy4HullFC said:

No, what would happen would be the standard would drop incredibly, the young players wouldn't reach a very high standard as they'd be playing in a lower level competition, clubs would struggle to fill their squads as there aren't currently enough players in France and ultimately the comp would go down the pan.

This "fill 'em with locals" line is just a myth. It won't necessarily give you a better elite squad. There needs to be a mixture.

That.

Also it's an easy way to win games. You don't need a NRL player, look at Lezignan with Tualima and Limoux with Pelo. A 110-120kg player makes such an impact in Elite 1 it's crazy.

[Southerner80]

11 hours ago, Man of Kent said:

Possibly. With a fair wind, playing at home and with the Burgess brothers not playing. But probably not, to be honest.

Perhaps more importantly, they need more games.

I ask myself what was the point of Scotland competing the last Four Nations?

Why did we chase that dream when France should always be the priority as the only other serious European nation? 

 

Totally agree. Its madness how France weren't t guaranteed 4 nations status.... We have alot to learn from Union in this regard..... 

[17 stone giant]

I agree that we should be playing France regularly, both home and away. I'm pleased that we're doing so later this year in Leigh.

In my opinion, France are the best (and possibly only) chance we have for creating a local team that will be able to compete with England (and certainly the only one, were we to revert to playing as GB permanently). If I was the RFL, I would be doing everything possible to aid with their development.

Yes, they will still struggle with the same problem facing Scotland, Wales, and Ireland (and even England, but to a lesser extent) - which is that RU will come sniffing should they produce an outstanding player. The difference, however, is that France have a larger population and therefore you would hope and assume that they will produce good players in greater quantities. RU can't take them all, so hopefully some would still see RL as a good career choice. If we can eventually get France playing regularly in big matches against England, Australia, and New Zealand, it will give young French players another reason to stay in RL.

The other thing is that rivalry with France is something that people understand and feel, in a way that I don't think most English people would say they do with the likes of PNG, Tonga, Fiji, etc.

Come on France!

[roughyedspud]

7 hours ago, roughyedspud said:

The excuse is France,more specifically Catalan,don't want to play England mid season...

Also the French team is lazy..

Someone just "reacted" to that with a confused emoji..

Why? It's a fact France don't want to play us mid season...that's why we created the exiles!

And yes the French team is lazy..that's why they aren't where they should be! Australia,England & FRANCE are the only nations with a proper multi tiered league set up...it should absolutely be the big 4 not big 3.....and France are the only ones to blame for that!

[17 stone giant]

4 minutes ago, roughyedspud said:

that's why we created the exiles!

Which lasted for four matches. I can't believe that ended five years ago. Time seems to fly by nowadays.

[UniSamX]

1 hour ago, Hvy wg said:

Yes and he's still the best centre we have.

Unfortunate. How does H. Miloudi go in the centres? Also is his brother good enough to play in the 3/4 line at international level or has the potential to? I'm aware they're both pretty loose units