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Mal Meninga: "We're playing the right amount of games"


Abicus

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18 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Exactly. To be honest I think we could be a bit more ambitious than that with locations. A better example would be to use Cardiff Arms Park (12,000 capacity) rather than Millenium. Equally Scotstoun in Glasgow or the new smaller ground being built next to Murrayfield would be ideal for Scotland to host games. England could look at places that don't normally feature in the big test calendar for the smaller games so Kingston Park Newcastle, Cumbria (if it ever gets built), York, maybe even Coventry or particularly Bristol for a wales game. We can't forget too that Leeds and London consistently have provided our best attended internationals so Headingley and perhaps even Brentford's new stadium could be potential venues for England. I don't know enough about France but you'd have to imagine the south west (Avignon, Perpignan, Toulouse) would be a good place to start. 

Perhaps it could start with England mainly playing away from home to put some much needed finances in the coffers of our neighbours. Just having England involved would give the whole thing a boost.

Going on world rankings, I'm thinking England, France and Scotland in Group A.

England versus a full-strength Scotland midseason in Cumbria, France v England in the autumn in Avignon/Perpignan/Carcassonne etc (which would also serve as a warm-up for the Kangaroos).

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5 minutes ago, Marty Funkhouser said:

Ok, spoken like someone with an absolute in depth knowledge of what it is like to play RL...but lets use some of the most played or used players in the All Blacks instead. 

Beauden Barrett, in the reasonable involved role of RU fullback, has played a total of 49 games, club, rep and international,  in 2 years. In those 2 years he has completed just over 100 tackles and made 240 odd carries and gained around 2400 metres.  

Kieran Read , the All Black skipper, in the much more demanding role of number 8 has played 34 times in 2 years in all games. He has made 393 tackles and 217 carries and gained around 690 metres.

Aaron Smith, in the very involved position of scrum half, has also played 49 times in 2 years, has made 235 tackles and carried the ball 86 times for around 670 metres in those 2 years. 

In Australian RL just for example;

Damien Cook the current Australia hooker, has played 58 games in the last 2 years, club, rep and international, he has made over 2300 tackles and has ran over 4400 metres.

The current full back , James Tedesco, has played 60 times in the last 2 years. He has made 231 tackles , has had over 700 carries and gained over 9000 metres.

The current Australian loose forward , Jake Trbojevic, has  played 60 times in the last 2 years. He has  made over 2200 tackles and carried over 800 times for over 6000 metres.

Judge for yourself what "that has got to do with anything" and what asking the RL players to play another dozen plus games over 2 years might do to them and the games.

Alternatively, play a game of RL one week, play a game of RU another week. Then ask yourself would like to play 40 games of RL or 25 games of RU over exactly the same period ?

All you've done is show that the emphasis is on the International game for RU, and the club game for RL.

You won't find many people on here saying that we need to keep the regular season the same length, but increase the amount of internationals.

Or, it just reflects that RL players are just fitter than RU players.?

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5 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

I've said before, do it as a magic style series for the NH. 

England, France, wales, ireland in the top tier, greece, scotland, italy, Serbia tier two.

Play each other in a round Robin 2 double headers per day in france, wales and ireland,  two weeks after the grand final 1st plays 2nd in each group in final/play off game and 3rd plays 4th in a relegation game in england

If say italy end up replacing ireland, they host a weekend the next year instead

Small federation sometimes struggle to afford having players in camp every 2 years (World Cup qualifications and World Cup). 

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7 minutes ago, MatthewWoody said:

I don't think hosting England and the other games would generate such money. 

Even if you only got 5000 people to show up (not totally unreasonable if England were involved) at 20 quid a pop that's £100,000 which is a significant sum for the smaller nations.

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18 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Even if you only got 5000 people to show up (not totally unreasonable if England were involved) at 20 quid a pop that's £100,000 which is a significant sum for the smaller nations.

Yes, in ru and soccer dominated countries.

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1 hour ago, scotchy1 said:

The last time france hosted England they got 15k, they got nearly 5k v wales 

Wales got 1.3k v ireland. 

I think 10k is certainly doable in the likes of wales or ireland 15-20k in France, 20-30k in england. That could ge 70k, at £20 a person that's 1.4m plus sponsorship, tv rights, merch, etc etc etc

I'm not saying we make millions but it's going to cover costs

Yes it certainly won't generate tons of income in the first instance, but as long as it is self sustaining then that should be fine for starters. I have zero knowledge as to the costs of stadium hire, but they would just have to make sure that they don't go for the Leigh Sports Village option, and instead try and make more of a splash with it, as they did when attracting 20k to Cov for England v Scotland in the 4 Nations.

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13 minutes ago, Oliver Clothesoff said:

Scotland, Wales and Ireland are utterly pointless. With no amateur clubs, no funding and very few players (probably not enough to make a seventeen man squad) who are born in those countries, we’re flogging multiple dead horses in the shape of those three. 

 

They all have amateur clubs. Wales also has 2 pro clubs.

So I presume you are therefore in favour of GB instead of England?

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39 minutes ago, Oliver Clothesoff said:

Scotland, Wales and Ireland are utterly pointless. With no amateur clubs, no funding and very few players (probably not enough to make a seventeen man squad) who are born in those countries, we’re flogging multiple dead horses in the shape of those three. 

 

Wales has a pretty decent amount of Welsh born players playing at a semi-pro or pro level and you know it. I assume you're just exaggerating when you say "no amatuer clubs" as well.

As for Ireland if they can give a competitive game which, based off 2017 World Cup form is possible, then who really cares?

But hey let's have England just play NZ for the 457th time this decade again. Australia hardly wants to play them because Australia are better and England are just far too good to waste their time trying to build fellow Northern Hemisphere nations.

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56 minutes ago, RugbyLeagueGeek said:

They all have amateur clubs. Wales also has 2 pro clubs.

So I presume you are therefore in favour of GB instead of England?

How many do they have? Scotland and Ireland, very few, and a few more in Wales. There’s also zero professional clubs in Wales, they’re both semi-professional and neither look close to being professional any time soon.

Absolutely. It’s bins off three utterly pointless nations with little Rugby League in them, two part-time clubs between three countries and very few, if any, development coaches in them, too. GB still offers the open door of playing Tier One International RL for the very few domestic players from those countries (Regan Grace, for example) too. It also opens the door for any cross-code signings to play Internationally too and offers a selling point to the Scottish, Irish and Welsh lads over “come and play for us in World Cup qualifiers in the back end of nowhere in front of less people than watch amateur Rugby”.

It cannot be profitable throwing money at renting a Police Sports Ground somewhere near Glasgow for less than 300 spectators for Scotland RL, it can’t be cheap taking 20+ players and staff to Spain for Ireland RL. What little money those governing bodies have would be better spent at the bottom of the game, at grassroots level, in schools to encourage kids to take the game up rather than be spent on English lads playing for those nations. 

I read on here that in the 3-5 years of Celtic Crusaders, they managed to develop an Academy that spawned Gil Dudson, Elliot Kear, Rhys Williams (I think), Ben Flower and certainly a few more. Surely the development of players is of higher importance to the game as a whole and those nations than East London born, former England International, Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook suddenly playing for Ireland in the ‘17 RLWC, for example?

Scotland, Ireland and to a lesser extent, Wales, are dying nations in Rugby League terms. Without funding (which has been pulled) and subsequent funding being used on development officers (of which Scotland and Ireland I believe have none), they’re not going to produce any players of their own and they’re just going to attempt to survive with players whose Nan’s were Irish or Scottish for years to come. I just can’t see how that is sustainable and how it’s seen as a good use of time and (limited) resources. 

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2 hours ago, Oliver Clothesoff said:

How many do they have? Scotland and Ireland, very few, and a few more in Wales. There’s also zero professional clubs in Wales, they’re both semi-professional and neither look close to being professional any time soon.

Absolutely. It’s bins off three utterly pointless nations with little Rugby League in them, two part-time clubs between three countries and very few, if any, development coaches in them, too. GB still offers the open door of playing Tier One International RL for the very few domestic players from those countries (Regan Grace, for example) too. It also opens the door for any cross-code signings to play Internationally too and offers a selling point to the Scottish, Irish and Welsh lads over “come and play for us in World Cup qualifiers in the back end of nowhere in front of less people than watch amateur Rugby”.

It cannot be profitable throwing money at renting a Police Sports Ground somewhere near Glasgow for less than 300 spectators for Scotland RL, it can’t be cheap taking 20+ players and staff to Spain for Ireland RL. What little money those governing bodies have would be better spent at the bottom of the game, at grassroots level, in schools to encourage kids to take the game up rather than be spent on English lads playing for those nations. 

I read on here that in the 3-5 years of Celtic Crusaders, they managed to develop an Academy that spawned Gil Dudson, Elliot Kear, Rhys Williams (I think), Ben Flower and certainly a few more. Surely the development of players is of higher importance to the game as a whole and those nations than East London born, former England International, Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook suddenly playing for Ireland in the ‘17 RLWC, for example?

Scotland, Ireland and to a lesser extent, Wales, are dying nations in Rugby League terms. Without funding (which has been pulled) and subsequent funding being used on development officers (of which Scotland and Ireland I believe have none), they’re not going to produce any players of their own and they’re just going to attempt to survive with players whose Nan’s were Irish or Scottish for years to come. I just can’t see how that is sustainable and how it’s seen as a good use of time and (limited) resources. 

That's a fair enough stance, and I can appreciate the arguments.

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41 minutes ago, RugbyLeagueGeek said:

That's a fair enough stance, and I can appreciate the arguments.

I’d have no problems re-introducing Ireland, Scotland and Wales should there be signs of growth there through amateur clubs, player development etc and we got to a point where Super League standard players were being churned out from any/all of the three named. I just don’t really get their purpose at present with the lack of funding in the grassroots in all three countries. 

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3 hours ago, Oliver Clothesoff said:

How many do they have? Scotland and Ireland, very few, and a few more in Wales. There’s also zero professional clubs in Wales, they’re both semi-professional and neither look close to being professional any time soon.

Absolutely. It’s bins off three utterly pointless nations with little Rugby League in them, two part-time clubs between three countries and very few, if any, development coaches in them, too.

Trouble with that argument is if you apply the same logic to the Pacific nations we'd have no Tonga, Fiji or Samoa.

Are you saying you'd bin them off too?

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4 minutes ago, Man of Kent said:

Trouble with that argument is if you apply the same logic to the Pacific nations we'd have no Tonga, Fiji or Samoa.

Are you saying you'd bin them off too?

I have no idea what the situation is in those countries in terms of funding and the amount of coaches and teams they have there, so it would be unfair and unwise to compare. 

However, Fiji are joining the Australian competition in future. 

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2 hours ago, Oliver Clothesoff said:

I’d have no problems re-introducing Ireland, Scotland and Wales should there be signs of growth there through amateur clubs, player development etc and we got to a point where Super League standard players were being churned out from any/all of the three named. I just don’t really get their purpose at present with the lack of funding in the grassroots in all three countries. 

Having more than 4 teams playing international rl worth watching?

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3 minutes ago, Oliver Clothesoff said:

And that’s exactly what we don’t have and can’t have while there is no funding, no development coaches and few amateur clubs in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Thanks for backing my point up.  

Scotland drew with NZ, etc.

World Cup proves that heritage players are helping the game having a proper Int scene.

Plus, having heritage players doesn't forbid local development.

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Just now, MatthewWoody said:

Scotland drew with NZ, etc.

World Cup proves that heritage players are helping the game having a proper Int scene.

Plus, having heritage players doesn't forbid local development.

These teams are hollow shells. 

But there is a point to be made, even if it is a shallow one.  The majority of Japan's RU team are not born in Japan.

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2 hours ago, Oliver Clothesoff said:

I have no idea what the situation is in those countries in terms of funding and the amount of coaches and teams they have there, so it would be unfair and unwise to compare. 

However, Fiji are joining the Australian competition in future. 

Well lets assume from the fact he's raising the issue that they are virtually the same scenario. There are more Tongans/Samoans/Fijians living in NZ/Aus than there are on the islands.

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2 minutes ago, MatthewWoody said:

Scotland drew with NZ, etc.

World Cup proves that heritage players are helping the game having a proper Int scene.

Plus, having heritage players doesn't forbid local development.

So, you’re trying to back it up with a result years ago played in England, in which zero players were Scottish born. Thank you again.

Having no funding, no development coaches, very few amateur clubs and having to spend thousands on stadium rent, player costs etc for a group of English lads is forbidding local development. 

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3 minutes ago, Oliver Clothesoff said:

So, you’re trying to back it up with a result years ago played in England, in which zero players were Scottish born. Thank you again.

Having no funding, no development coaches, very few amateur clubs and having to spend thousands on stadium rent, player costs etc for a group of English lads is forbidding local development. 

Matty Russell born in Irvine.

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