Quote: Willzay "There is certainly an irony in hoping that new foreign teams will help improve the game here.'"
IF there could ever be a strong French national side, it would help our national side, by giving them some "local" opposition to face - mind you, with the form of Great Britain on tour, it may be us dripping to their standard instead.
The ideal situation would be for there to be sufficient players in France, no doubt topped up with a few Aussies, for them to have an equivalent to SL but, that is possibly more far fetched than some of the expansion dreamers on here - as I said "an ideal".
As things stand, Catalan, much as they give decent value to the comp and allow a summer break to the south of France, are never going to produce enough players to make French international rugby any kind of major force.
Should we abandon ship and accept that RL is just an M62 sport - would this really be good for the sport ?
It could be argued that SL, including say London and Leigh or Fev, may be a decent competition and maybe, we should forget any kind of expansion, other than any "natural" growth but, I really dont think that this would help improve any TV deal, in fact, it could nail the coffin lid down and we could then be left with a semi pro sport, devoid of any national profile.
For me, it's expand or die, although, a transatlantic league just isn't the right move.