uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/17042012/ ... plans.html

uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/17042012/ ... plans.html

This is the most wonderful news. It is a great boost for our game in the international aspect.

Will all the matches be on the television in the UK and France?

Interesting competition structure.

This is not new, it happened before - 1998 Wakefield. Lancashire Lynx, UTC?, Villneuve I think were the teams - think Lancashire won it Called the Treize Tournoi. It was pretty good although the newly promoted to SL Trinity didn't take it seriously despite being the strongest team by some distance.

Definitely worth a go but needs to last a lot longer than one season, for once the RFL must plan long term.

Sounds good to me. At some stage, I'd like to see the magic weekend played in France.

Premier Sports are showing the two games playing at Leigh and Featherstone on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd June - 3pm.

Good concept for me, well done to the RFL and French Federation for this. Hopefully they can push this through and it can kick on to be a league version of the Heineken cup with eventually clubs from Wales taking part. Has the potential to raise the international game if over the next decade or so it can be built upon.

There is a great shout!

Who is paying for it? seeing as the championship teams get nowt from prem sport for making us play on a thursday?????

A new innovative tournament designed to raise the profile of the game in France and to give extra competition to the Championship and this is the best you can come up with?

Pathetic.

Just out of interest, how would you go about this expansion? Obviously this needs the best part of a 4 year cycle and even up to a decade before considering expansion in order to build itself an identity and a strong base to build from.

Just off the top of my head, an idea that would help boost the international game in Europe. Two groups of four.

Championship Grand Finalists, French Grand Finalists, Scotland 'A', Ireland 'A', Winners of a Scorpions vs Crusaders play off (potentially use a league game to do this), Winners of the European Shield (Serbia/Russia/Italy/German... labelled as an 'A' team)

Interesting concept, will be good to see sides we haven't seen on telly often from France.



The other option for Championship clubs then is not be on telly at all, of course.