The Exiles would be much too strong for England

[Mathius Hellwege]

18 hours ago, Dunbar said:

This is the key for me. A regular fixture (I said two but I would be ok with one) which is planned and in the diary for years to come.

With the SL and NRL running concurrently, France are the only established nation we can play mid year. Let's take advantage of that and plan some tests in the South of France mid year for a few years.  The French could use that certainty to build some awareness and create a 'festival of Rugby League' weekend around it.  Better than a week night in Leigh.

this is the way it should be done

 

[Manfred Mann]

15 hours ago, The Frying Scotsman said:

To be fair... PNG absolutely leathered the English using a bunch of part time guys from Non-League Aussie clubs and the likes of Barrow.

England are very weak relative to the 'global' game. A lot of their fans seem very blind to this.

Admittedly though, even they should beat a select team of 'Exiles' thrown together for one weekend. Manfred's post is clearly a wind up!

To be fair, I don’t see why England should beat the Exiles team that I have named.

To be fair, I don’t see why my post should be considered a windup  I am just trying to penetrate the blindness about England’s relative weakness, which you in your unusual status on this forum as an open minded Scotsman, have admitted exists. And I am trying to do so before the June 26 mismatch causes widespread shock and depression among those Englishmen who cannot see rugby league reality.

[The Frying Scotsman]

3 minutes ago, Manfred Mann said:

To be fair, I don’t see why England should beat the Exiles team that I have named.

To be fair, I don’t see why my post should be considered a windup  I am just trying to penetrate the blindness about England’s relative weakness, which you have admitted exists. And I am trying to do so before the June 26 mismatch causes widespread shock and depression among those who cannot see reality.

Fair enough Manfred.

I just thought that the limited prep time that a cobbled together exiles team would have would count against them, as I guessed England will be professional enough to have mid season camps etc as well as the full week pre match.

[Dave T]

2 hours ago, Mathius Hellwege said:

yes, you cannot count tournament matches

The reason these tournaments exist (and they are really a quite recent thing) is because the RFL and ARL organised them. 

The vast majority of games are and should be tournament games now. Playing tournaments is progress. 

It is utterly bizarre to not count some games when discussing how many times we have played teams. 

Why are people afraid of admitting that we play France regularly? 

The world has moved on, there are more international teams knocking around, there are more tournaments, there is more structure to the game (not enough of all those things, but more than previously), I fear fans haven't moved on with this belief that for France to progress they need games against England. Despite all the criticism of the treatment of so-called 2nd tier nations, fans are still clamouring for the old days. 

[Dave T]

2 hours ago, Mathius Hellwege said:

yes, if we had  yearly six nations in Europe (four would be more realistic) then everything would be fine

But you don't count tournament games, so how would that be fine? 

[Oxford]

On 12/03/2021 at 15:51, Dave T said:

From such a positive start they managed to kill it off in three years instead of growing it. 

Now there's a great title for a thread & I wonder how long the list would be if we recorded them all.

 

[Tommygilf]

5 hours ago, Dave T said:

But you don't count tournament games, so how would that be fine? 

Because the tournaments we have established in RL have been at heart expansions of Kiwi/Kangaroo/Lions tours

[Sir Kevin Sinfield]

15 hours ago, Dave T said:

The reason these tournaments exist (and they are really a quite recent thing) is because the RFL and ARL organised them. 

The vast majority of games are and should be tournament games now. Playing tournaments is progress. 

It is utterly bizarre to not count some games when discussing how many times we have played teams. 

Why are people afraid of admitting that we play France regularly? 

The world has moved on, there are more international teams knocking around, there are more tournaments, there is more structure to the game (not enough of all those things, but more than previously), I fear fans haven't moved on with this belief that for France to progress they need games against England. Despite all the criticism of the treatment of so-called 2nd tier nations, fans are still clamouring for the old days. 

I agree the majority of our International games should be in tournaments, the Four Nations tournament was great for England. Saying we play France regularly is a stretch.

Since the last World Cup England/GB have only played France once, they’ve played New Zealand 6 times and Tonga/PNG each once. With so many Southern Hemisphere teams able to complete with the big 3 International and France so close that’s shocking.

[Dave T]

11 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

Because the tournaments we have established in RL have been at heart expansions of Kiwi/Kangaroo/Lions tours

 

Why didn't we just carry on with tours? They actively chose to expand to 4n to include other teams. 

And the next move was to move to 8, which was an excellent decision. Until it was all undermined. 

The introduction of tournaments (World Cup, Euros, Pacific, 3/4 nations), has been a great development. Abandoning the 4n (if that is what has now happened is a disaster). 

[Tommygilf]

1 minute ago, Dave T said:

 

Why didn't we just carry on with tours? They actively chose to expand to 4n to include other teams. 

And the next move was to move to 8, which was an excellent decision. Until it was all undermined. 

The introduction of tournaments (World Cup, Euros, Pacific, 3/4 nations), has been a great development. Abandoning the 4n (if that is what has now happened is a disaster). 

Exactly

[Dave T]

1 hour ago, Sir Kevin Sinfield said:

I agree the majority of our International games should be in tournaments, the Four Nations tournament was great for England. Saying we play France regularly is a stretch.

Since the last World Cup England/GB have only played France once, they’ve played New Zealand 6 times and Tonga/PNG each once. With so many Southern Hemisphere teams able to complete with the big 3 International and France so close that’s shocking.

I have written the facts. We played France 9 times between 2010 and 2019 (the last 10 years we actually played). I class that as regular, happy to disagree if you don't. 

[Dave T]

Just now, Tommygilf said:

Exactly

We agree 100% on that, but that is a different point. 

In fact this is sort of my issue. People want to just keep going back to things like more games against France, when we should be focusing on bigger than that IMHO. 

 

[Tommygilf]

18 minutes ago, Dave T said:

We agree 100% on that, but that is a different point. 

In fact this is sort of my issue. People want to just keep going back to things like more games against France, when we should be focusing on bigger than that IMHO. 

 

I see it more that English fans inclined to a broad international outlook see what Australia and NZ have engendered in the southern hemisphere with the Oceania Cup and want a piece of that. From my own and I'm sure others perspective we also can see England being left behind, as the Pacific nations choose to play themselves and, as we've spent 10 years considering our near neighbours as second tier test teams not really worth bothering too much about, we've not developed them to be anything like a good competition for us.

I know its a pet peeve of mine but that the Scotland team of the 2013 WC and 2016 4 Nations was played by England only once, in the latter tournament (which I think the point others on this thread are trying to highlight in that it was not by RFL design), is a travesty. For the first time in 50 years we had a Northern Hemisphere team who could compete and on a good day get points from England, but we decided yet again that only the Kiwis and Australia were worth it. Its the same story with the Irish 2017 WC team.

In the past 10 years we've seen the, oft accused by English fans of being self-centred, NRL/ARLC introduce protected 2nd tier club sides from PNG and Fiji, have allocated weekends for regular annual test matches for nations in their periphery (ironically including England on a couple of occasions) and ultimately created the Oceania Cup which they and New Zealand compete in. I don't think its unreasonable for people to want something similar for France, Wales, Scotland and Ireland led by England.

[Dave T]

Just now, Tommygilf said:

I see it more that English fans inclined to a broad international outlook see what Australia and NZ have engendered in the southern hemisphere with the Oceania Cup and want a piece of that. From my own and I'm sure others perspective we also can see England being left behind, as the Pacific nations choose to play themselves and, as we've spent 10 years considering our near neighbours as second tier test teams not really worth bothering too much about, we've not developed them to be anything like a good competition for us.

I know its a pet peeve of mine but that the Scotland team of the 2013 WC and 2016 4 Nations was played by England only once, in the latter tournament (which I think the point others on this thread are trying to highlight in that it was not by RFL design), is a travesty. For the first time in 50 years we had a Northern Hemisphere team who could compete and on a good day get points from England, but we decided yet again that only the Kiwis and Australia were worth it. Its the same story with the Irish 2017 WC team.

In the past 10 years we've seen the, oft accused by English fans of being self-centred, NRL/ARLC introduce protected 2nd tier club sides from PNG and Fiji, have allocated weekends for regular annual test matches for nations in their periphery (ironically including England on a couple of occasions) and ultimately created the Oceania Cup which they and New Zealand compete in. I don't think its unreasonable for people to want something similar for France, Wales, Scotland and Ireland led by England.

The Euro Cup has been a far better organised tournament for quite a long period of time. I pulled some numbers recently that showed that the NH teams played far more games than their SH counterparts over the years, we shouldn't ignore what is happening. 

The big difference is the make-up of the NRL and the fan base it has on its door. The growth of Tonga RL is great, but it is a bit of a quirk rather than a strong plan that has got it to where it is. But sometimes that is how growth happens and I really hope it is capitalised on now and continues to grow. 

And tbh, if we are going to hold the Aussie model up as strong, or something to be jealous of, why aren't we highlighting that pretty much all of the Aussie games are tournament games? Apart from an invitational game versus PNG (any suggestion of England Knights playing France is lambasted) and Anzac tests, they don't play. 

You won't get me arguing with the execution of a lot of the international stuff, you know we are aligned on that, but there has been far more structure and effort in the NH international game over the years. But if the RFL staged a triple header of Ireland v Wales, Scotland v France and Greece v Serbia in Wigan during the year, it wouldn't get 20k and it would be ridiculed. 

I think one of the reasons people don't realise we have played France as much as we have is due to many of them being non-events in Leigh etc. For me, England should only ever play France in France at the moment. I think that has a use from a training camp point of view, and as a fan it's something I'd love to be part of if they created a supporters club or similar. 

[Tommygilf]

10 minutes ago, Dave T said:

The Euro Cup has been a far better organised tournament for quite a long period of time. I pulled some numbers recently that showed that the NH teams played far more games than their SH counterparts over the years, we shouldn't ignore what is happening. 

The big difference is the make-up of the NRL and the fan base it has on its door. The growth of Tonga RL is great, but it is a bit of a quirk rather than a strong plan that has got it to where it is. But sometimes that is how growth happens and I really hope it is capitalised on now and continues to grow. 

And tbh, if we are going to hold the Aussie model up as strong, or something to be jealous of, why aren't we highlighting that pretty much all of the Aussie games are tournament games? Apart from an invitational game versus PNG (any suggestion of England Knights playing France is lambasted) and Anzac tests, they don't play. 

You won't get me arguing with the execution of a lot of the international stuff, you know we are aligned on that, but there has been far more structure and effort in the NH international game over the years. But if the RFL staged a triple header of Ireland v Wales, Scotland v France and Greece v Serbia in Wigan during the year, it wouldn't get 20k and it would be ridiculed. 

I think one of the reasons people don't realise we have played France as much as we have is due to many of them being non-events in Leigh etc. For me, England should only ever play France in France at the moment. I think that has a use from a training camp point of view, and as a fan it's something I'd love to be part of if they created a supporters club or similar. 

I think that is where the appreciation of the different markets comes in though. In Australia as we see, Fox or Nine will cover games not including Australia because the sport and these national diasporas are significantly popular enough to warrant it even without Australia or New Zealand being directly involved.

In the Northern Hemisphere that simply isn't the case. Wales v France wouldn't normally be televised. That means England, who can just about get the leverage to get games televised, needs to be even more proactive and creative in its thinking. England bring the party in terms of the media interest and coverage that the others should, and have previously, benefitted from. Yes the other games not involving England may be lower in profile, but that 1 game at least is getting the exposure.

I think the level at which games against France have been neglected over here, to the point where Knights games against Jamaica have as much interest, is appalling. In my mind England should ideally be playing away in these countries, but if that is not possible then only Leeds, London, or somewhere off the beaten RL track should be considered.

[Dave T]

10 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

I think that is where the appreciation of the different markets comes in though. In Australia as we see, Fox or Nine will cover games not including Australia because the sport and these national diasporas are significantly popular enough to warrant it even without Australia or New Zealand being directly involved.

In the Northern Hemisphere that simply isn't the case. Wales v France wouldn't normally be televised. That means England, who can just about get the leverage to get games televised, needs to be even more proactive and creative in its thinking. England bring the party in terms of the media interest and coverage that the others should, and have previously, benefitted from. Yes the other games not involving England may be lower in profile, but that 1 game at least is getting the exposure.

I think the level at which games against France have been neglected over here, to the point where Knights games against Jamaica have as much interest, is appalling. In my mind England should ideally be playing away in these countries, but if that is not possible then only Leeds, London, or somewhere off the beaten RL track should be considered.

I don't disagree with much of that, but to bring it back to the original topic, one of the things that would do a lot for RL in England would be England winning the WC on home soil. Now we have missed out on the series versus Australia I have no issues with them deciding they need the strongest opposition possible as a warm up. That isn't France. 

I think these discussions are slightly separate issues, but they get linked together because some people don't like the Exiles. 

[Tommygilf]

33 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I don't disagree with much of that, but to bring it back to the original topic, one of the things that would do a lot for RL in England would be England winning the WC on home soil. Now we have missed out on the series versus Australia I have no issues with them deciding they need the strongest opposition possible as a warm up. That isn't France. 

I think these discussions are slightly separate issues, but they get linked together because some people don't like the Exiles. 

I do get that, and I have nothing against the exiles per se, though I can understand people's frustrations when we haven't built up another nation in the way which has been possible.

But specific to the world cup, we're asking 28,000 folk to turn up to Bolton to watch England play France. That is going to require a huge "world cup boost", which I'm hopeful we'll get, but we don't make it easy for ourselves. Equally, if it works I have zero faith that we would try and repeat it - back to Tuesday evening in Leigh.

[Mathius Hellwege]

On 13/03/2021 at 16:41, Dave T said:

But you don't count tournament games, so how would that be fine? 

a yearly tournament in a sports driven by internationals is obviously more worth than a once-in-four-years-iw-we-are-lucks world cup and an abandoned tournament

 

so nice try, but in Rugby League in the current state you have to play France annually without a tournament to make it happen to give them a chance to develop