Expressions of interest for France 2025 - Wheelchair, Womens and Youth

[UTK]

https://www.intrl.sport/news/international-rugby-league-records-massive-interest-in-france2025/

The IRL has register extremely healthy interest from countries looking to compete in the Wheelchair, Womens and Youth variations of the 2025 RLWC in France.

31 nations expressed their interest in participating in the Women's tournament (almost double the 16 interested in 2021), 24 for Wheelchair (2021 had just 10) and 29 for the inaugural Youth tournament. 

Link indicates which teams will be pre-qualified for the respective tournaments and provides some more information on how the qualification will be designed for the Women. Interestingly only 4 Nations are pre-qualified for the Youth tournament (Aus, NZ, England, France) and there's no confirmation of how many sides will be included. 

Exciting times with so much interest shown, particularly the Youth tournament and the particular nations that have stuck their hands up.

[fighting irish]

Great news! Thanks for sharing it UTK. 

[The Rocket]

1 hour ago, UTK said:

https://www.intrl.sport/news/international-rugby-league-records-massive-interest-in-france2025/

The IRL has register extremely healthy interest from countries looking to compete in the Wheelchair, Womens and Youth variations of the 2025 RLWC in France.

31 nations expressed their interest in participating in the Women's tournament (almost double the 16 interested in 2021), 24 for Wheelchair (2021 had just 10) and 29 for the inaugural Youth tournament. 

Link indicates which teams will be pre-qualified for the respective tournaments and provides some more information on how the qualification will be designed for the Women. Interestingly only 4 Nations are pre-qualified for the Youth tournament (Aus, NZ, England, France) and there's no confirmation of how many sides will be included. 

Exciting times with so much interest shown, particularly the Youth tournament and the particular nations that have stuck their hands up.

Wouldn`t it be great to see some of the u19`s teams given some close-up exposure to some of the main competition men`s and women`s teams.

Being careful of stereotypes and generalisations I`d like to think some of those African teams could really benefit from seeing what`s done with our own Indigenous and Pacific Island Rugby League.

[UTK]

1 hour ago, The Rocket said:

Wouldn`t it be great to see some of the u19`s teams given some close-up exposure to some of the main competition men`s and women`s teams.

Being careful of stereotypes and generalisations I`d like to think some of those African teams could really benefit from seeing what`s done with our own Indigenous and Pacific Island Rugby League.

I'm super excited to see how they implement the Youth tournament, especially which nations are selected and how the groups are structured. 

My pipedream wishful thinking is that a non-traditional country like South Africa could use the carrot of a tournament like this to entice more schoolboys/junior activity for young players of both codes who want the opportunity to put themselves in the shop window for a professional career. Likewise, rewarding some of the emerging nations doing good domestic work with the opportunity to play against the big boys at a level where the gap in quality is lower would be awesome to see.

There will obviously still be a solid talent gap between the top 3-4 and the rest so I wouldn't be surprised to see a return of our old senior "super groups" but this would definitely depend on how big they make the tournament. 

[gogledd]

Wonderful to hear that the Wheelchair competition goes from strength to strength. 

Wales WhRL have been involved in discussions with Nederlands and Brazil Wheelchair teams - in fact North Wales Crusaders WhRL supplied Brazil with their playing shirts to get them started. 

It would be great to have LDRL and PDRL competitions in the World Cup too.

Edited April 30 by gogledd

[Yakstorm]

For me, I hope this youth tournament isn't a one off. We've been fortunate enough that the French government has come to the party to fund the inaugural, though in order for this concept to truly help the international game, we ideally want to be running one of these every 2 years. 

U19s is a good target age where any kid who shows potential is still young enough to continue to improve and join the development frameworks, but also old enough that they are less of a risk than say a 14 or 16 year old. 

As other have said, having an event like this regularly is a huge carrot for nations to lure across talented athletes to play the code.  The hope from there we can keep as many of them as possible in the sport and even get a few some professional contracts.