Quote: Sal Paradise "You can only develop international teams where the game is played to a certain concentration. RL is only played in any numbers in Australia, New Zealand, UK, France and SSI - even RU and Cricket have double that in terms of countries that participate in reasonable numbers.
If England RU only played Australia and NZ every year the international game and got beat or played Japan every year and won by a huge margin the international would stagnate. England playing France/Wales in the middle of the season is a waste of time. Playing a one off game mid season against a southern hemisphere side is impractical - no other sport does that.
If we could compete with the clubs in the NRL than a 8 team WCC would be a unique spectacle - we have seen 40k attendances for these games in the past. The key is to strengthen the club game both financially and playing standards wise and then you have a product to sell.'"
England play Italy every year in RU, they have played 22 times, lost 22 times, scoring 275pts and conceding 882pts.
Many sports play mid-season internationals, The autumn internationals where Southern Hemisphere RU nations play northern hemisphere RU ones is are played in the northern hemisphere season, Lions tours, all mid season.
In fact we will play a southern hemisphere side this year mid-season.
Outside the top three nations, we can easily see Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, France, PNG, and as we saw last year, Scotland put out competitive sides. There are literally 10 cricketing nations, 1 of them is an absolute basket case about to lose its full member status, another is one of the poorest nations on earth who have won a grand total of 8 tests out of 98, another of their full member nations isnt even a real country and another is a war-zone that can't host home games.
as for an expanded WCC, it isnt an either or situation.