Rugby League Tour de France

[Gomersall]

 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

It's so refreshing to see someone talking so positively about the sport. The game in France is going from strength to strength at the moment and its so exciting! Great to hear the venues for 2025 will be sorted by the start of next year, can't wait for 2025 and taking a month off work to follow the world cup round France!

[Eddie]

Excellent. The Elite 1 and 2 comps seems to have regressed a bit over the last few years, certainly in terms of numbers and spread of teams, so hopefully this will give the domestic game a big boost. 
For what it’s worth I wouldnt play the final in Paris either, I’d have it much nearer where the game is played so RL fans and players can get there more easily - Marseille would be perfect. 

[Eddie]

3 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

It's so refreshing to see someone talking so positively about the sport. The game in France is going from strength to strength at the moment and its so exciting! Great to hear the venues for 2025 will be sorted by the start of next year, can't wait for 2025 and taking a month off work to follow the world cup round France!

Fancy a summer holiday in France in 2025 sweetheart? Oh yes please, where are we going, Paris, the Loire Valley, the Riviera? No Auxerre, to see the Cook Islands v Jamaica. 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

15 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Fancy a summer holiday in France in 2025 sweetheart? Oh yes please, where are we going, Paris, the Loire Valley, the Riviera? No Auxerre, to see the Cook Islands v Jamaica. 

"No we're not staying in a 5* beachfront hotel on the riviera, sipping champagne on the terrace sat watching the sun set over the Mediterranean, we're having a tour of rundown, working class towns and cities and visiting all the best 10,000 capacity community athletics stadiums while staying in dilapidated hostels with 1,000s of other peed up Northerners!! Rugby League!!! 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

16 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Excellent. The Elite 1 and 2 comps seems to have regressed a bit over the last few years, certainly in terms of numbers and spread of teams, so hopefully this will give the domestic game a big boost. 
For what it’s worth I wouldnt play the final in Paris either, I’d have it much nearer where the game is played so RL fans and players can get there more easily - Marseille would be perfect. 

Marseilles would be my choice for the final as well. I'd maybe only have a couple of games in Paris, maybe France's group opener and a semi. 

[Jughead]

I wouldn’t be against a Paris final. A capacity, at present, of 48,500 at Parc Des Princes is a decent sized venue compared to the 81,000 Stade de France, which is fanciful to think we’d fill that. A presence in the capital is quite important overall. 

 

[RP London]

34 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Marseilles would be my choice for the final as well. I'd maybe only have a couple of games in Paris, maybe France's group opener and a semi. 

Moulin Rouge for that?

[RP London]

I totally mis understood the topic title and thought.. well one of the mountain stages is surely at Batley

[Oxford]

Paris has become a sort of lost El Dorado for french TGG too important to ignore and too biased to know what to do about it.

 

[Eddie]

4 minutes ago, Oxford said:

Paris has become a sort of lost El Dorado for french TGG too important to ignore and too biased to know what to do about it.

 

Is it too important to ignore? The distance from Paris to the French heartlands is much more than London to ours, yet there’s only one London game at the England World Cup.  The south of France is huge, no problem with focusing the tournament there, where the game is currently played imho. 

[Oxford]

8 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Is it too important to ignore?

Yes!

[Jughead]

As much as I’d like to, there’s no way I can justify a month in France. I had a decent pot saved up and saw as much of the 2013 tournament as I wanted taking in games in Limerick, London, Bristol and Cardiff along the way. Good times. 

[Oxford]

54 minutes ago, Jughead said:

As much as I’d like to, there’s no way I can justify a month in France. I had a decent pot saved up and saw as much of the 2013 tournament as I wanted taking in games in Limerick, London, Bristol and Cardiff along the way. Good times. 

Go for less than a month, go for as long as you can afford ..... I will.

[Jughead]

Just now, Oxford said:

Go for less than a month, go for as long as you can afford ..... I will.

I will see closer to the time though any World Cup isn’t going to live up to that 2013 one, travelling across the UK to watch that. 

[Oxford]

4 minutes ago, Jughead said:

I will see closer to the time though any World Cup isn’t going to live up to that 2013 one, travelling across the UK to watch that. 

The only thing wrong I can see is that RLWC will get better each time we have one and the food's always been better in France.

[Eddie]

1 hour ago, Oxford said:

Yes!

Care to elaborate? 

[Just Browny]

It depends what your level of ambition is, doesn't it?

Can you have a great, worthwhile world cup without Paris? Yes.

Can you become a leading sport in France without Paris? Probably not.

How much money would you need for RL to 'crack Paris'? Probably more than we will ever have. Even football has struggled without zillionnaires.

[ATLANTISMAN]

Paris Final would be a disaster i have made my opinion very clear to Luc on this Marseille would be my choice for the Final.

No problem with games in places like Nantes/Calais/Lille/Lens etc but Paris sorry no.

 

P 

[Jughead]

5 minutes ago, ATLANTISMAN said:

Paris Final would be a disaster i have made my opinion very clear to Luc on this Marseille would be my choice for the Final.

No problem with games in places like Nantes/Calais/Lille/Lens etc but Paris sorry no.

 

P 

Why would using the capital city and one of the most iconic cities on the planet be a “disaster” and why would Marseille  (100km from Avignon) be any better?

[gogledd]

Already looking to source a second hand campervan so I can follow the tournament! The alternative may be cycling and camping!

[kiggy]

If I am still alive in 2025, anyone passing by chez Kiggy is more than welcome to stop and have a beer and a chat. We are just north of the A64 near Tarbes, which is the main road from Biarritz to Toulouse and then the A61 to Carcassonne and on to Narbonne 

[Eddie]

1 hour ago, Jughead said:

Why would using the capital city and one of the most iconic cities on the planet be a “disaster” and why would Marseille  (100km from Avignon) be any better?

What’s the distance to Avignon got to do with it, is that your barometer for how good a candidate a city is? 

[latchford albion]

50 minutes ago, kiggy said:

If I am still alive in 2025, anyone passing by chez Kiggy is more than welcome to stop and have a beer and a chat. We are just north of the A64 near Tarbes, which is the main road from Biarritz to Toulouse and then the A61 to Carcassonne and on to Narbonne 

If all goes to plan, I'll have retired just before the tournament so I might just take you up on that Kiggy.

[Jughead]

10 minutes ago, Eddie said:

What’s the distance to Avignon got to do with it, is that your barometer for how good a candidate a city is? 

It’s quite isolated in terms of locality to the French heartlands, aside from a fourth tier side, so I’m merely curious why Marseille is seen as such a “must” for a final beyond the venue size.