rlTHIS IS A DEPRESSING READrl

It seems that even after over a decade of Catalans being in SL, the French game is still a shambles and fewer than 2,000 people attended the Elite 1 Final, down from 12k a decade ago.
It's obvious that Catalans being in SL and Toulouse in the Championship is not having the desired impact on the game at grassroots level and it seems that the infighting is still going on.

How can we assist France?

I'd like to see English clubs take their "home" games v Catalans to other French towns. The NRL clubs sometimes do this for their home games v the Warriors and they receive incentives from local councils for doing so. This coming season, the Bunnies are playing the Warriors in Queensland......it would be good if a side like Warrington took their Home game to somewhere like Avignon and fill the 17k stadium there.....surely better than the 8k they usually get and no doubt the local council would appreciate a few thousand visitors?

In the Championship, Bradford could look to take their home Toulouse game to another City o the South of France.

What's obvious is that if the game in France isn't given urgent help, it'll continue to shrink

How can France RL assist France RL, that really is the question.

Why should English clubs have their home games at Catalan/Toulouse, wouldnt they lose much needed revenue?

Well for a start every league club in this country could have a sister one in France. Hold exchange visits to share experience on all aspects of running a Rugby League club both commercially and on the field. For example Batley share with Albi their experience of sound financial management on modest budgets etc. Bradford tell Carpentras how to go bust every other year (ok not best example), but they could share their positive track record of identifying talented young lads despite being in the lower leagues.If my club Bradford had a sister club in France I'd look out for their results, I might even buy a shirt. I know its not an earth-shattering idea but it seems a relatively simple and practical measure.

Thats a really good idea IMO.

Agreed, I'm bored of French RL, it offers nothing at International level and can't run a domestic competition to save its life. It's not our job to save them and how much longer are they going to blame Vichy?

I know they have issues but they have to take responsibility for themselves before I'd be willing to help, its just good money after bad.

Kick out all the English clubs in SL.

The French RL is a perfect example of how not to run a sport . It makes us look competent. Every season one of the most interesting things in the competition is the annual who will fail to complete their fixtures sweep. As I always post, when this subject comes up, other minority sports manage to get TV coverage and sponsorship but French RL teams seem happy to take cash from the local town hall and an occasional fattish cat. Imagine a sport created by The league of gentlemen and you have a fair indication RL in the South West of France.

"Loal sport, for Local peeple"...

The OP is a spoof post to wind up the wind up king Jean, Roy. I really do think the ignore function would be the best way to wind him up. Well wind him down and out.

There's absolutely no question of helping the French at professional level, several English clubs have struggled in Superleague and if they struggle enough then they go down to the Championship. It's up to Gausch and his board along with the French governing body to sort themselves out. Helping the French would be "positive discrimination"....

2006 and Catalans took the field with a number of French talents, Casty, Bosch, Verges, Rinaldi, Fakir, Fellous, Mounis, Fraysinnous, Sadouis, Guigue etc.....Players like Baile, Fellous, stacul, Ferriol, Elima and Duport were following on to stake their places in the French team Les Catalans.

2020 and here's a pretty much first choice Catalans side - Mead, Tierney, Langi, Maloney, Drinkwater, McIlorum, Moa, Whiteley, Tomkins J. Davies, Tomkins S. and Kasiano. no french players at allWe just need a token Frenchman to captain it - The great but 34 year old Remy Casty.

Add to that the disbanding of the Catalans Academy and you have total failure of the original policy and reason for Catalans to be in Superleague and that was to build the game in France enough to resurrect France as a bona fide first class International side. Laughably people want Toulouse in Superleague, hysterically McManus preferred Toulouse over Toronto for promotion. It's quite clear he didn't do that because he thought Toulouse would add anything to the game here, they wouldn't, they would ship in Aussies and English players, McManus made that choice as Toronto were even worse than Toulouse on player development and International credentials.

The English game needs to help itself and stop opening doors to it's player pool to leave the country. Axey loves his Jean wind ups, he's too smart to mean what he says in his OP....

There are many different ways to help French RL and there is no doubt that, if we could wave the proverbial magic wand, having a strong French side would be good for the game, as we need as many genuine top level sides to improve the international game.

I dont know too much about the set up over there but, when you take out the best side from the national league, who became Catalan Dragons, the national league would always suffer.
Having said that, perhaps it's up to the French to work out which path they want their sport to go down and then work our how to get there.
The one certainty is that having one FT pro side in France + Toulouse, isn't ever going to allow them to compete with the big boys.
For this to happen, there would need to be 5 or 6 SL standard clubs over there, which, quite frankly, is never going to happen.

I do like the idea of English clubs "twinning with the French though and in the long term, with better coaching and development, their game would improve and more importantly, the number of potential SL players would increase, which could only be good for the sport.

It makes sense to build on something that currently exists, rather than planting RL clubs in no mans land or, halfway around the world

Well the Dragons aren't in the academy league anymore so there's no pathway for players to Superleague via their own backyard. Currently the Dragons have 12 English and Aussie players in their team and are chasing Wigan cast-offs as they head for a wholly non French team. They do not seem to have any regard for their original mission which was to be the conduit for the best players in France to professionalise and thereby make for a professional French International side.

Therefore there is no actual point to them any more, but its very kind of you to suggest that whilst Catalans stop bothering with French players somehow English clubs have to do this work for them? I note (as always) another of your interesting points that it may need "5-6 SL clubs in France" to get the game cooking there, both the development of players and a TV deal no doubt.

Takes me back to when Perez said that there would also need to be 5-6 north american clubs in Superleague to get a NATV deal and spark the grass roots there too.

How we fit 10-12 Superleague clubs from France and America into SL I dunno. Maybe we should stop being so insular and selfish? I say scrub Superleague and go for a Franco-American league .

I think we should just let more teams into our league structure. The argument against this in the past has been that hardly any of the clubs in France do not have the resources to hack it in Super League.

This has been a good reason on the assumption we are just making them jump though some hoops on the way to Super League. However looking at the applications of Ottawa and Belgrade neither of these club have "getting to Super League" as their top priority. Instead they have said that the production of talent, Canadian and Serbian respectively, is the main goal. Even the early talk coming from Valencia Hurricanes is that they want to have a Spanish club with Spanish players even if this means they will be a League 1 club for a long time.

Getting back to the OP the way the RFL can help these clubs is for the RFL to pay for all travel between European club centrally regardless if it is a coach over the Pennines or a plane over the channel. This has always been a big expense for any French club that wants to play in the UK, with the likes of Toulouse just swallowing the cost until they can get up into Super League and get more money.

So why don't we get the Carcassonne, Limoux, Lézignan, etc. into League 1 and help them pay for them and their visitors travel. That sounds simple enough to me.