England Matches in 2023

[Dave T]

8 minutes ago, crashmon said:

This

Basically of the top 7 sides in the world (8 if you include Cook Islands), only one is in the NH (England).   Why would Tonga / PNG / Samoa etc come to play in England, when they can have yearly run-outs at a fraction of the cost vs NZ / Aus etc.

Now if England toured then I can see them playing England, but coming to England, I don't see until we can get at least France competing at the top table and challenging the top 6.  And for that England need to play france twice a year, and france needs games vs Wales / Ireland as well

Because there is commercial value in touring the UK. 

[Barley Mow]

28 minutes ago, crashmon said:

This

Basically of the top 7 sides in the world (8 if you include Cook Islands), only one is in the NH (England).   Why would Tonga / PNG / Samoa etc come to play in England, when they can have yearly run-outs at a fraction of the cost vs NZ / Aus etc.

Now if England toured then I can see them playing England, but coming to England, I don't see until we can get at least France competing at the top table and challenging the top 6.  And for that England need to play france twice a year, and france needs games vs Wales / Ireland as well

I agree with the basis of your comment. As I see it though, we will have a world cup every four years and we can tour the southern hemisphere every four years, so there are two years in four to fill.

Surely in those years one of Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, PNG, Fiji can come to us? If they took it in turns, they'd each only come once every 12 years - surely that's not too onerous?

That would be our autumn internationals and during the summer we should play matches against France every year.

That would be a minimum we can work with and build from.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Barley Mow

[The Hallucinating Goose]

21 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

When England play San Marino at football there are more people paying money to watch the game at Wembley than there are actual residents of San Marino.

The West Indies are a huge draw in cricket - some of their constituent nations have fewer than 60,000 citizens.

Samoa, Tonga and the rest have a resonance with an English audience - in part because of their visibility in union internationals over the years.

I was obviously going to look up the populations of the West Indies Islands wasn't I?

The West Indies cricket team represents 15 territories. 10 are sovereign states, 3 are British overseas territories, 1 is a constituent country of the Netherlands and 1 is a US territory. 

Populations are as follows:

Antigua and Barbuda: 100,000

Barbados: 287,000

Dominica: 72,000

Grenada: 124,000

Guyana: 743,000

Jamaica: 2,726,000

St Kitts and Nevis: 47,000

St Lucia: 184,000

St Vincent and the Grenadines: 104,000

Trinidad and Tobago: 1,367,000

Sint Maarten: 41,000

Anguilla: 15,000

British Virgin Islands: 30,000

Monserrat: 4,000

US Virgin Islands: 87,000

This adds up to a total population of 5,931,000 which is almost the same population as Denmark. 

I know that has nothing to do with RL but I do love a statistic!

[ATLANTISMAN]

2 hours ago, gingerjon said:

Brighton's ground is lovely but England v France there would essentially need to have tickets given away - and it would be madness to have Brighton and London being two of the three Tests.

Totally disagree England v France in Brighton is a great sell no preconceptions it would fly:)

 

Paul

[Davo5]

16 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Because there is commercial value in touring the UK. 

And you’d hope the financial reward would allow them to go some way to break the grip the NRL has on the PI nations 

[Davo5]

10 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

I was obviously going to look up the populations of the West Indies Islands wasn't I?

The West Indies cricket team represents 15 territories. 10 are sovereign states, 3 are British overseas territories, 1 is a constituent country of the Netherlands and 1 is a US territory. 

Populations are as follows:

Antigua and Barbuda: 100,000

Barbados: 287,000

Dominica: 72,000

Grenada: 124,000

Guyana: 743,000

Jamaica: 2,726,000

St Kitts and Nevis: 47,000

St Lucia: 184,000

St Vincent and the Grenadines: 104,000

Trinidad and Tobago: 1,367,000

Sint Maarten: 41,000

Anguilla: 15,000

British Virgin Islands: 30,000

Monserrat: 4,000

US Virgin Islands: 87,000

This adds up to a total population of 5,931,000 which is almost the same population as Denmark. 

I know that has nothing to do with RL but I do love a statistic!

Very good,but you really need to get out more.

[Dave T]

1 minute ago, Davo5 said:

And you’d hope the financial reward would allow them to go some way to break the grip the NRL has on the PI nations 

Yup. There isn't real value in the internationals in the SH. For all the talk of Tonga being a huge draw, they were sponsored by a local Aussie plumber. 

I think somebody is going to need to be brave here, we need to make it work financially for NH teams to travel South, and SH teams to travel North. 

[gingerjon]

11 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

I was obviously going to look up the populations of the West Indies Islands wasn't I?

The West Indies cricket team represents 15 territories. 10 are sovereign states, 3 are British overseas territories, 1 is a constituent country of the Netherlands and 1 is a US territory. 

Populations are as follows:

Antigua and Barbuda: 100,000

Barbados: 287,000

Dominica: 72,000

Grenada: 124,000

Guyana: 743,000

Jamaica: 2,726,000

St Kitts and Nevis: 47,000

St Lucia: 184,000

St Vincent and the Grenadines: 104,000

Trinidad and Tobago: 1,367,000

Sint Maarten: 41,000

Anguilla: 15,000

British Virgin Islands: 30,000

Monserrat: 4,000

US Virgin Islands: 87,000

This adds up to a total population of 5,931,000 which is almost the same population as Denmark. 

I know that has nothing to do with RL but I do love a statistic!

Pah. Denmark.

Tin pot little country.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

3 minutes ago, Davo5 said:

Very good,but you really need to get out more.

Not really mate, I'm a nerd that jerks off over maps, graphs and spreadsheets and I'm happy about it!

Edited July 26, 2022 by The Hallucinating Goose

[Big Picture]

23 minutes ago, crashmon said:

This

Basically of the top 7 sides in the world (8 if you include Cook Islands), only one is in the NH (England).   Why would Tonga / PNG / Samoa etc come to play in England, when they can have yearly run-outs at a fraction of the cost vs NZ / Aus etc.

Now if England toured then I can see them playing England, but coming to England, I don't see until we can get at least France competing at the top table and challenging the top 6.  And for that England need to play france twice a year, and france needs games vs Wales / Ireland as well

You're overlooking the fact that even to compete with France, Wales and Ireland need their southern hemisphere heritage players.  We all saw how weak the Welsh team which played France this year was, they did well not to lose by an even bigger margin than they did.  And unless RL can somehow get a lot more money coming into the game so it's sufficiently rewarding for talented RU players to come over again, that won't change.

15 minutes ago, Barley Mow said:

I agree with the basis of your comment. As I see it, we will have a world cup every four years and we can tour the southern hemisphere every four years, so there are two years in four to fill.

Surely in those years one of Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, PNG, Fiji can come to us? If they took it in turns, they'd each only come once every 12 years.

That would be our autumn internationals and during the summer we should play matches against France every year.

That would be a minimum we can work with and build from.

When the only southern hemisphere tours which don't lose money go to Australia, how is that a viable plan?

[Davo5]

2 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Not really mate, I'm a nerd that jerks off over maps, graphs and spreadsheets and I'm happy about it!

Must make unfolding them tricky though.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

4 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

Pah. Denmark.

Tin pot little country.

Well others countries with a similar population are Turkmenistan, Republic of Congo and Central African Republic. You can't tell me they are tin pot countries! 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

1 minute ago, Davo5 said:

Must make unfolding them tricky though.

They do stick together quite a bit. 

[Ragingbull]

1 hour ago, gingerjon said:

If Australia aren't coming because the NRL want their players to stay in Oz then there is no way Tonga or Samoa are coming over.

And where exactly will NZ be selecting their players from?

Edited July 26, 2022 by Ragingbull

[JonM]

23 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

Pah. Denmark.

Tin pot little country.

And yet still a bigger population than Wales, Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand and all those other countries that make RU such a massive international sport. It is about the same population as Yorkshire though.

[Big Picture]

54 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Because there is commercial value in touring the UK. 

For Australia and New Zealand there is, but for the others?  That has yet to be demonstrated.

Note well that those other countries' RU teams only tour Europe as part of the big multi-national RU autumn international series and that's anchored by big clashes with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina.  If standalone tours by teams from the little island countries aren't on in RU, what makes you think they'd work in RL?

[Dave T]

2 minutes ago, Big Picture said:

For Australia and New Zealand there is, but for the others?  That has yet to be demonstrated.

Note well that those other countries' RU teams only tour Europe as part of the big multi-national RU autumn international series and that's anchored by big clashes with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina.  If standalone tours by teams from the little island countries aren't on in RU, what makes you think they'd work in RL?

That was my point about somebody needing to be brave. We néed to prove the concept. 

The RU comparison isn't a good one. The nations like NZ, SA and Aus have been touring for years, and they won't ever end, they come because there is a commercial market for internationals. So there is no reason for England RU to just ignore the best teams in the world and arrange games versus teams outside the top 5.

In RL, we have the weird position that the risk is relatively modest. Even against the Kiwis we have ran series' with fewer than 75k fans, so the benchmark isn't exactly that high for us to be pushing for. Similarly, I expect our TV money is modest (versus more prolific international sports), so it really shouldn't be out of the question to be able to build up quality test series' against these teams. 

If all goes to plan this year, England will play great games against Samoa and Tonga, in front of huge crowds. If both of those attract 50k, get good viewing figures, then we are in a place to be able to put that proposal in front of people. 

I can understand us going with NZ next year, but I do hope they are hoping that the RLWC can be used as proof of concept. 

[NW10LDN]

1 hour ago, crashmon said:

This

Basically of the top 7 sides in the world (8 if you include Cook Islands), only one is in the NH (England).   Why would Tonga / PNG / Samoa etc come to play in England, when they can have yearly run-outs at a fraction of the cost vs NZ / Aus etc.

Now if England toured then I can see them playing England, but coming to England, I don't see until we can get at least France competing at the top table and challenging the top 6.  And for that England need to play france twice a year, and france needs games vs Wales / Ireland as well

Ireland is never going to care about rugby league. Union has that market cornered already. And then you have the GAA and soccer.

[Davo5]

54 minutes ago, Big Picture said:

For Australia and New Zealand there is, but for the others?  That has yet to be demonstrated.

Note well that those other countries' RU teams only tour Europe as part of the big multi-national RU autumn international series and that's anchored by big clashes with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina.  If standalone tours by teams from the little island countries aren't on in RU, what makes you think they'd work in RL?

Tonga,Samoa,Fiji are competitive RL nations,they aren’t in Union.

[JonM]

46 minutes ago, Dave T said:

In RL, we have the weird position that the risk is relatively modest. Even against the Kiwis we have ran series' with fewer than 75k fans, so the benchmark isn't exactly that high for us to be pushing for. Similarly, I expect our TV money is modest (versus more prolific international sports), so it really shouldn't be out of the question to be able to build up quality test series' against these teams. 

And of course, the amount of money needed to make it worthwhile is correspondingly less. A one-off England v Tonga game could generate a few hundred thousand in profit. Not worth it for the ARL, but a significant sum for RL in Tonga.

[Big Picture]

6 minutes ago, Davo5 said:

Tonga,Samoa,Fiji are competitive RL nations,they aren’t in Union.

Other than current RL fans though, nobody knows that.  And if they did know that, would that just give them a reason to think that there must be something fundamentally wrong with a sport where England and the other northern hemisphere countries don't dominate those little island countries like they would in every other sport on the planet?

Edited July 26, 2022 by Big Picture

[Tommygilf]

Do we just not ask Tonga/PNG/Fiji/Samoa (even Lebanon) if they are interested in touring here or are they just not bothered?

It must make some financial sense for them surely?

[Tommygilf]

Just now, Big Picture said:

Other than current RL fans though, nobody knows that.  And if they did know that, would that just give them a reason to think that there must be something fundamentally wrong with a sport where England and the other northern hemisphere countries can't dominate those little island countries like they would in every other sport on the planet?

The 6 nations in RU only works because England and France don't dominate like they *should*. Hasn't hurt them.

England RL are desperate for competitive international fixtures. We barely took advantage of Scotland, we cannot let other competitive teams pass us by. Especially when they could sell tickets in plenty of reasonably sized grounds in the UK.

[Davo5]

12 minutes ago, Big Picture said:

Other than current RL fans though, nobody knows that.  And if they did know that, would that just give them a reason to think that there must be something fundamentally wrong with a sport where England and the other northern hemisphere countries don't dominate those little island countries like they would in every other sport on the planet?

They would if it follows a successful World Cup campaign from those nations.

I doubt anyone but you would think a sport has fundamental problems because a smaller nation is successful,we’re they saying that when Japan beat South Africa in the Union WC or when Iceland had a great run in the euros,we’re they saying that when Greece & Denmark actually won the euros or when Ireland beat England just before England won the cricket WC ?

[paulwalker71]

8 hours ago, gingerjon said:

 

Except with Ralph Rimmer doing the Delia