Don't you people remember back when we GB tours and the Challenge Cup was a bigger event.......Rugby League was clearly the number 1 sport, not only in this country but the world too!

And imagine the uproar on here if they decided not to bother with a world cup or continued with mid season internationals against france or wales. Whinging for the sake of whinging. Personally im really looking forward to the world cup, and don't think the exiles side is all that terrible. Its certainly the best team we have available to play against as a warm up.

Agree I don't think having teams like Cook Islands playing Scotland de values the World Cup. For me what de values it is that realistically there is only 2 realistic winners, maybe 3 at a push but more than likely Aus will bee winning. In football there are several realistic options of winning the tourniment

Are there really though?

Since 1966, there have been six different winners in 11 tournaments (West/Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Spain, France). For a global game, that would seem to indicate that the potential winners come from a small pool when compared to the number of countries which enter.

I think there are more Potential winner of a World Cup football yes.

Be serious.... everybody knows it will be a final between two out of three teams at the most.

That cannot be stated with any certainty with either the football, or RU world cup competitions.

So the Union world cup final won't be any two from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa? Yeah. Right.

Even if you have say 6 teams capable of winning the Football World Cup, that is still a lower percentage of total teams competing (6/32....18.75%) than in the RLWC (3/14....21.4%).

So you still have the same number of teams 'making up the numbers'.

I can't work out whether this is a joke. So my apologies. I think it is.

In case it's not, one of England or France has contested every final since 1995. 1991 featured England too.

RU's world cup can at least boast 5 finalists and 4 different winners in its last 4 iterations.

FIFA World Cup
12 different finalists (Bra (7), Ita (6), Ger (7), Arg (4), Uru (2), Fra (2), Eng (1), Spa (1), Hol (3), Cze (2), Hun (2), Swe (1))
8 different winners (Bra (5), Ita (4), Ger (3), Arg (2), Uru (2), Fra (1), Eng (1), Spa (1)

Cricket World Cup
6 different finalists (Aus (6), Ind (3), W. Indies (3), Sri Lanka (3), Pakistan (2), England (3))
5 different winners (Aus (4), Ind (2), W. Indies (2), Sri Lanka (1), Pakistan (1))

Union World Cup
5 different finalists (NZ (3), Aus (3), SA (2), England (3), France (3))
4 different winners (NZ (2), Aus (2), SA (2), England (1)

Rugby League World Cup
4 different finalists (Aus (12), England (9), NZ (3), France (2)
3 different winners (Aus (9), England (3), NZ (1)

I love how you have thrown Cricket in there........

Yes, but if the chant is anything to go by, surely Ian Kirke would struggle to keep ten ladies happy in a single evening ?