An international side versus a club team on tour would be much more appealing to a lot of people than the WCC. I used to watch the WCC with excitement, but ultimately, it doesn't mean very much to most Australians. An expanded WCC certainly would not. Also, it would undermine the finals series and Grand Finals of both nations - unless it was run roughly like soccer's WCC, which uses the champions only from each country. We'd need to add the Catalans, Crusaders and Warriors just to fill out numbers, and if those teams hadn't performed well in NRL/SL, it could undermine the concept.

Rugby Union successfully stages Lions tours, where the Lions play midweek tour games against clubs in front of good crowds. The Wallabies, All Blacks and Springboks have all played tour games in recent years against British or Irish clubs, in front of excellent crowds. The Wallabies played and defeated. Tuesday November 3rd, 2009.
* rlCardiff Blues 31-3 at Cardiff City Soccer Stadium. Crowd 14,622 (capacity is 26,82icon_cool.gifrl. Tuesday November 24, 2009. This year, the Wallabies will play Irish provincial team Munster and English Premiers Leicester Tigers.

South Africa payed and lost to
* Leicester Tigers at a sold-out Welford Road Stadium, crowd 24,000. rlLeicester won 22-17rl (the video shows how passionate the Leicester club fans during the game and when they won). Friday November 6th, 2009.
* Saracens at Wembley, crowd 46,281 (capacity 90,000). rlSaracens won 24-23rl (the other video doesn't have the crowd noise, but features a performance review by Andy Farrell, ironically)

New Zealand's All Blacks played Munster to a capacity 26,500 crowd at a redeveloped Thomond Park, Tuesday November 18, the mid week ABs winning narrowly. Tell me the electric atmosphere of this game wouldn't be good for RL

There's a place for both. Tour games can be more competitive, generate more revenue, be logistically easier to plan and run, and be more meaningful to established RL communities than certain test matches, e.g. Big 3 tests against certain emerging nations.

I don't quote every sentence that "suits me". I quote every sentence that I disagree with (which was most of them). Which ones do you think "didn't suit me".

Ironically, the thing you're having a go at me for here (which isn't true) is exactly what you've done in this reply (i.e. ignore my reply to your comment that a crowd of 31k for a 4N Final being "a poor effort"icon_wink.gif.

Again, contradicting yourself.


That was my point.
You didn't "cherry pick" the best of English players like you said. You picked up some duds as well.
How many of the dud Aussies that come over here do you think the English public have heard of and are paid loads? They are called "cheap options" for a reason. You can pretend that we think they're all superstars all you like. The fact is, most fans ridicule their signings.

It happens both ways.


So they could be paying him big bucks then for all you know? Rusty even came over to England to convince him to sign, and you Aussies are wetting yourselves at how good he is.

Again, works both ways.


Me personally? Nothing other than the contribution I make to the club with my season pass and merchandise purchases!

Berro wasn't in the twilight of his career when we signed him, unless you think a 27 year old is "past it". As I said before, he was a current Aussie international, and the current MOM holder at the GF. He was in his prime.

Fitz was signed on a one year deal to aid in the development of the players around him with his work ethic (much like when we signed Kearney, which got us a Challenge Cup). Again, a World Cup finalist when we signed him. Maybe not his prime, but a continued level of excellence and a world class player, and still proves to be (which is why we resigned him). Rumours were that Roosters wanted him back. What would you have said then? Remember, you took back a 33 year old Jason Smith and kept him for 3 further years in your competition full of apparently only young up and coming Australians...


Because you've had enough of getting found out and embarrassing yourself? 3.5673828125:5