For the comments about the Welsh and Irish being RU Players playing RL in the off season. Whilst I agree that its true at the moment, isn't there a chicken and egg situation with the RL Conference season being too short for serious players to make it their football code of choice?

The pool structure allows geographical pools to keep travelling costs down until the knock out stages.

The NR Cup would allow the season to be extended and potentially allow players to be primarily RL players.

The Edinburgh Eagles v Carluke Tigers in the Scottish Grand Final last year was a pretty high standard even with primarily RU players. Presumably Wales and Ireland would be better still (although I agree for the first season or two they would get heavily beaten).

If the travelling costs can be covered for the knock out stages then I say give it a go. Give the National Leagues a bit of international glamour.

It doesn’t matter if it’s just one French club or not. I’d say that 80% of the clubs below SL are dicing with death. Any additional costs, for games which will probably lose money, could be the straw which breaks the camels’ back for many clubs.

This is how perilous it now is below SL.

Interesting. The Scottish RL site posted something about a club joining the National Leagues a couple of years ago but obviously this came to nothing.

Edinburgh Eagles we unbeaten in all but one game last season and I've heard that they were the club looking to join National Leagues. Paddy Coupar joined Town from the Eagles, so they have produced at least one player able to hack it at Championship 1 level.

Where they would play is another matter. When I went to see them at Corstophine it was a field and an RU club house. Certainly not suitable to the NRC.

And your solution? Keep doing the same thing that we've done for the past 50 years and hope for the best?

Mind you - I agree there needs to be external money available for the travelling costs of the French team (and Irish if its still applicable).

That's not what we have now though, is it?



Then we'd have to try and get people excited enough about coming to watch a French/Scottish/Welsh club in order to try and make some sort of a profit. Some of these clubs operate on less than 500 fans. I have no idea how they do it. Local rivalries are far more important to keeping these clubs afloat than French/Scottish/Welsh clubs. I know that doesn’t fit well with you, but it is the sad fact.

I believe Whitehaven are struggling badly to stay afloat at the moment. Do you really think that including French, Scottish and Welsh clubs in the NRC would help that?

Playing games that few would want to watch with traveling costs thrown in could only make things worse. We have the Challenge Cup for that. That’s enough imo.

A pool of French clubs with one/two progressing or one/two clubs playing in different pools? I think the French pool would be cheaper.