Despite having a team in SL for a long time it seems the national team is no closer to being competitive. How can France improve?

they need to hire a good coach and that will help them out a lot, in the next 4 years a lot of talented young french players will be coming through.

More full-time clubs. I don't understand why people expect them to be competitive with the top nations on the back of one full-time club. It would be like Wigan playing NZ without Blake Green, Pat Richards, Anthony Gelling, Harrison Hansen, Gil Dudson, Matt Bowen and Ben Flower. They need a full-time pool of at least 30-40 players to even have a chance of being competitive. At the moment they have about 20, and half of those are reserves.

While more FT teams would you would hope improve things, it hasnt neccessarily worked for England, so essentially the same things are needed that are needed for everybody else

Better coaching at junior level, more junior clubs, just MORE of everything basically

For me it's a case if crack on doing what they are doing with Catalan and start cranking things up with Toulouse. Catalan have come on leaps and bounds and are starting to get some really decent French players coming through but these things take time. More time than they have had IMO

Given the crowd in Avignon do they have a potential ft club?

Agree with that, especially better coaching at Junior level. Some of it is god-awful.

Where to For France? good question, lets ask jean capdouze

Same as Ireland.

They need a bigger pool of players to pick from. Putting another full time French team SL would help but we need more full time French players playing in SL in general. Look at NZ, they have one FT team but they're the world champions, and just how many of NZ squad actually come from the NZ club?

Another French team would be filled with Australians...they would want instant success.

They would be better served sending some of their better junior players over here or to Australia / N.Z.

It still doesn't explain how the Catalans players do in the national shirts though does it?, and the sympathy for the French National team on here is another reason why we haven't won anything at International level either. We are forever weakening our own hand to aid others...Poor French team?...fast track another French team into S.L

As for New Zealand?....they'd been getting results at international level and supplying players to Aussie/ British clubs long before the Auckland Warriors entered the N.R.L, all from a country which battles to get out of the shadow of the All Blacks.

Maybe the French should start to help themselves more first.

Getting a proper coach (preferably French) would be a start, Bobby Goulding and Agar were both joke appointments.

I don't think its all doom and gloom though, players like Fages & Escare have their best years ahead of them.

Another French SL team, more teams in the British lower levels and having English clubs bringing through French juniors in their academy systems.

All pretty basic stuff, just takes time.