I don't see a problem with championship players playing. A little mix up will make it better for the audience anyway. Championship players will more than lightly try harder anyway along with players looking for an England spot. I say bring it back. No point in having Engalnd matches mid season due to the fact of Bennet being away with the Australian based players also unavailable.

You could make the basis of a Yorkshire team good enough to beat all-comers from the top Lanc teams;
Clark
Westwood
Westerman
Atkins
Bateman
McIlorum
Walmsley
Turner

Not for me:
- The crowds were poor before, can't see why that would change
- The top players will be miraculously 'injured' or booked in for ops on that week as they were on the last Exiles game before that was quietly dropped
- NRL clubs won't release their players, so the quality wouldn't be great.
- Fans in Lancashire and Yorkshire have top level rugby on their doorstep as it is. we're not appealing to anyone SL isn't already targeted at. The games could be taken on the road but then you exasperate the crowd issue.

IMO an England mid-season tour to play Samoa, Fiji, Tonga etc has more merit in that at least it will be a competitive games for the England side against guys they don't otherwise regularly come up against. Potentially more of a change of the NRL releasing their guys too given that it's not as far away.

The die hards would love it, it may seem popular on here but it's a complete dead rubber, pointless, does sod all for expansion, reinforces stereotypes and will have union laughing in the halls of Twickenham as we dig our heels into the north, build our walls across Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire keeping out union while they set sail and conquer the rest of the world.

This idea should have been cemented in at least 50 years ago, it might be an actual event now, with other counties ready to join in.
Now though it's outdated and only really supported by the most insular counties in England...the Yorkshire combinations.

We need to expand in Yorkshire & Lancashire too. A similar number of people watched Leicester Tigers last 2 home games as watched a pro RL game this week. And every single one of those RL games, except the game in Toulouse, was played in Yorkshire or Lancashire.

We have to expand the sport beyond Yorks & Lancs of course, but that is a long term effort starting at the grassroots. 2/3rds of clubs are in Yorkshire & Lancashire and it's hardly like we're racking up big crowds anywhere. So we have to get more people who live near our clubs to turn up to games and be involved in RL. That's easier to do in the short term and can be done ALONGSIDE expanding the sport geographically.

Cheshire is very real and is older than Lancashire and on your logic shall we go back to Northumbria or Deira or Rheged and Elmet or Brigantia for the whole of the North then? How about calling it Hen Ogledd like in old Welsh tales of "The Old North"? Before the words Lancashire and Yorkshire even existed there were long standing names for the areas of this island where Lancashire and Yorkshire became made up places. But time moves on. You shouldn't stay stuck in the past, it's a backwards way to live. Counties are almost relics to me anyway. They mean absolutely nothing to me. Or to anyone I know other than people from Yorkshire and Cornwall. I've never met anyone else who gives a rats about their county. They're just administrative areas for councils and Police forces. I'm a Mancunian and, to me, people from Lancashire have stupid Gorby accents and sound like farmers or like they've got two marbles in their mouths when they speak.