Bring back the 4 nations

[David Dockhouse Host]

11 hours ago, The Legend said:

We don't need the Southern hemisphere teams. Let's build up the home nations + France. They wouldn't want in anyway. 

Granted, England will dominate at first but the other home nations will only improve with a platform for them to improve. 

Other Nations are miles away, no end of Internationals will change that.

We need to play the top teams regularly

[crashmon]

2025 should have 2 small aims froma NH perspective

1) England in the final

2) France make QF

Before the final, RFL should be announcing mid season internation v France in france as a start. If the Kiwi's are touring England for 3 games announce the fixtures asap, and get tickets on sale

Get the Kiwi's to play a warm up game v france prior to the tour

[hw88]

11 hours ago, moorside roughyed said:

Rugby league is southern hemisphere centric. That's the problem. In the other code Ireland, Wales, Scotland and France are alot stronger,that's why the six nations is a decent competition. In rugby league there's only England who can challenge the southern hemisphere nations. That's my take anyway.

That's why we should always play as GB. In reality it's never going to grow substatially in the other 3 nations. If it was going to happen it would have happened in Wales already - it's been tried often enough.

Furthermore the NRL is a more competitive competition - more teams (and expanding) and less predictable. A perfect breeding ground for good rugby players Add to that the influx of Polynesians who seem to be perfectly physically suited to the game and you get 4+ powerful RL playing nations.

We have Super League - a misnomer if ever there was one - which is the RL equivalent of the Scottish Premiership. Go on, who's going to win it in 2023 Saints, Wigan or Leeds? Our only competitor is France - good 60 years ago but incapable of matching us now, and going backwards seemingly.

 

 

[Wellsy4HullFC]

9 minutes ago, hw88 said:

That's why we should always play as GB. In reality it's never going to grow substatially in the other 3 nations. If it was going to happen it would have happened in Wales already - it's been tried often enough.

Furthermore the NRL is a more competitive competition - more teams (and expanding) and less predictable. A perfect breeding ground for good rugby players Add to that the influx of Polynesians who seem to be perfectly physically suited to the game and you get 4+ powerful RL playing nations.

We have Super League - a misnomer if ever there was one - which is the RL equivalent of the Scottish Premiership. Go on, who's going to win it in 2023 Saints, Wigan or Leeds? Our only competitor is France - good 60 years ago but incapable of matching us now, and going backwards seemingly.

Who's going to win the English Premier League this season? Man City or Man City? Don't see your point.

Let's have GB because the other nations will never be good enough? Why? It's just England under a different name

[GeordieSaint]

Oh jeez… here we go. Bring back GB. No doubt bring back Yorks vs Lancs will be the next short term ‘radical’ nostalgic quick fix answer to absolutely the wrong question.

[hw88]

9 minutes ago, Wellsy4HullFC said:

Who's going to win the English Premier League this season? Man City or Man City? Don't see your point.

Let's have GB because the other nations will never be good enough? Why? It's just England under a different name

Arsenal

[Big Picture]

18 minutes ago, hw88 said:

That's why we should always play as GB. In reality it's never going to grow substantially in the other 3 nations. If it was going to happen it would have happened in Wales already - it's been tried often enough.

Furthermore the NRL is a more competitive competition - more teams (and expanding) and less predictable. A perfect breeding ground for good rugby players Add to that the influx of Polynesians who seem to be perfectly physically suited to the game and you get 4+ powerful RL playing nations.

We have Super League - a misnomer if ever there was one - which is the RL equivalent of the Scottish Premiership. Go on, who's going to win it in 2023 Saints, Wigan or Leeds? Our only competitor is France - good 60 years ago but incapable of matching us now, and going backwards seemingly.

Just which Welsh and Scottish players would you add to make GB stronger than England is then?  Oh wait there aren't any such players nowadays because the RU converts who boosted past GB teams aren't coming into the game now because RU pays better and gives them a bigger stage to play on.

[Wellsy4HullFC]

24 minutes ago, hw88 said:

Arsenal

Despite being 5 points clear, the bookies still strongly disagree.

[The Legend]

11 hours ago, Madrileño said:

I'm sorry,  but this is the sort of deluded nonsense that keeps Rugby league from achieving any actual growth.

Rugby union, whatever you think of it, has physical grass roots clubs, with pitches, licensed clubhouses, changing rooms, floodlights etc, in almost every town from Cornwall to Cumbria. It has clubs in Leigh, in Warrington, in Hull, in Wakefield. It has clubs in towns where rugby league recently existed but has now died, like Carlisle, Cockermouth (apologies if they have been resurrected), Bramley, and Oxford. These clubs have thousands of children playing the game, thousands of parents supporting, watching and volunteering, and thousands of interested people buying drinks, pies, etc.  In turn, these thousands of people follow the upper tiers of the sport and turn up in their thousands for rugby union events such as World Cups (32k for italia v Canada at leeds) England internationals (Twickenham packed every game by fans paying top dollar) and Heineken Cup weekends where fans travel all over UK, Ireland, France and Italy.

This is a big community, massively invested in the sport they follow. Their game is in the Olympic Games, Commonwealth games and to almost the entire world, is the only version of "rugby" they have ever heard of.

Your suggestion that "we can overtake onion because our game is more entertaining " is complete and utter fantasy. 

The fact that you and I think rugby league is more entertaining is neither here nor there. The majority of paying customers completely disagree with you. They like their form of rugby much better. Rugby union makes far more money because far more people watch it, and far FAR bigger companies want to sponsor it. 

Rugby League can grow. It can expand its base, it can focus resources on driving participation among children, it can modify its rules to make it safer in light of the impending concussion litigation, it can improve facilities for participants (to retain them in the sport) and it can make its "heartland" in northern England bigger by expanding its reach step by step into cities like Sheffield, Merseyside conurbation, North Yorkshire etc, while offering regular fixtures against heartland teams. These are some realistic objectives. "Overtaking union" is simply never going to happen. 

 

You'd have given me the same speech in the 1970s if I said that Darts on indoor league will overtake the Wrestling on World of sport, which was packing out every city and town hall in the country whilst darts was played in a pub, but here we are. 

I guess people just find the darts more entertaining. 

[Death to the Rah Rah's]

I’m all for Wales being included, but Scotland and Ireland shouldn’t be in tier one international rugby until they have a competitive league in their respective countries.

until we get to that point they should be playing the likes of Malta, Netherlands,  Serbia, Greece etc, as they are all at a similar level in their development 

[Tommygilf]

2 hours ago, David Dockhouse Host said:

Other Nations are miles away, no end of Internationals will change that.

We need to play the top teams regularly

Indeed, however we may be heading for a major dose of "how do France feel when it comes to international RL"...

[crashmon]

I'm just waiting for the announcement for 2023 of

• England will play the combined nations again mid season in Leigh or at Post Office Road or maybe at warrington
• They will try and sell it as a rematch of the WCSF (it wont be as it will a 100% different team)
• Crowd will be 5K
• lots of blaming on cost of living crises why gate was pathetic, and none of the real reason, people in the heartlands are not going to spend loads of money watching England play made up teams.

I would love to see a mid season announcement of a game vs France (in france), but we all know the idiots in the RL would never do it.

[Spidey]

Pay up some serious cash & get Samoa & Tonga back over next year for something like this 

Week 1 :

France v Samoa @ Avignon

England v Tonga @ Newcastle

 

Week 2 : 

France v Tonga @ Toulouse 

England v Samoa @ London

 

Week 3 :

France v England @ Perpignan

Tonga v Samoa @ Saints/Warrington/Leeds

 

Week 4 :

Final @ Manchester

[hw88]

3 hours ago, Big Picture said:

Just which Welsh and Scottish players would you add to make GB stronger than England is then?  Oh wait there aren't any such players nowadays because the RU converts who boosted past GB teams aren't coming into the game now because RU pays better and gives them a bigger stage to play on.

And therein lies the problem. There isn't enough money in RL in Britain to make it a fully professional sport. I believe that is also true of RU (see Wasps and Worcester) and most football teams for that matter. It is beyond me how they can finance it. The internationals might be a big money spinner but surely they can't make that much that they can subsidise the top clubs as well as the grassroots game.

[Midlands hobo]

15 hours ago, Bolton Leyther said:

I see Norfolk Island have been cruelly overlooked here.

And drakes island. At least they can justify the ******* annoying drummers

[MatthewWoody]

12 minutes ago, Spidey said:

Pay up some serious cash & get Samoa & Tonga back over next year for something like this 

Week 1 :

France v Samoa @ Avignon

England v Tonga @ Newcastle

 

Week 2 : 

France v Tonga @ Toulouse 

England v Samoa @ London

 

Week 3 :

France v England @ Perpignan

Tonga v Samoa @ Saints/Warrington/Leeds

 

Week 4 :

Final @ Manchester

Would they come?

[Spidey]

Just now, MatthewWoody said:

Would they come?

That’s the million dollar question ain’t it. That’s why I said throw some cash at them

[Midlands hobo]

3 hours ago, Big Picture said:

RU pays better and gives them a bigger stage to play on.

Not for much longer 

[MatthewWoody]

2 minutes ago, Spidey said:

That’s the million dollar question ain’t it. That’s why I said throw some cash at them

It's possible they prefer staying in the Southern Emisphere where they're based.

[Big Picture]

1 minute ago, Midlands hobo said:

Not for much longer 

That remains to be seen.  The Rugby Premiership could cut their salary cap another 2 million £ and still pay more than SL can.  RL's international stage isn't going to compare with RU's international stage any time soon either and ditto for the club strage.

[Spidey]

3 minutes ago, MatthewWoody said:

It's possible they prefer staying in the Southern Emisphere where they're based.

It would have to be a sizeable incentive. Maybe England should offer to play in actual Tonga & Samoa at some stage and invest in their domestic game

[MatthewWoody]

3 minutes ago, Spidey said:

It would have to be a sizeable incentive. Maybe England should offer to play in actual Tonga & Samoa at some stage and invest in their domestic game

Yes, possible.

For sure, yesterday's loss damaged our reputation.

[Midlands hobo]

4 minutes ago, Big Picture said:

That remains to be seen.  The Rugby Premiership could cut their salary cap another 2 million £ and still pay more than SL can.  RL's international stage isn't going to compare with RU's international stage any time soon either and ditto for the club strage.

Granted premier rugby salary cap is £5m roughly equal to the new $10m aus in the nrl. But they are all skint. Look at the debt level.

[Big Picture]

5 minutes ago, Spidey said:

It would have to be a sizeable incentive. Maybe England should offer to play in actual Tonga & Samoa at some stage and invest in their domestic game

That would lose a lot of money.

[jacksy]

As usual we will ignore teams on our doorstep.

Home internationals + France need to happen. Its only our arrogance that stops this happening.

We complain the aussies are arrogant because they don't want to play us because we are uncompetitive.

We then use the same  excuses ourselves against playing the other home nations.

Scorelines are irrelevant give youngsters something to look to achieve.