How can you possibly judge it now?

The true benefit of catalans won't be seen until 15-20 down the line from when they started, when a whole generation of potential rl players has grown up with a professional super league club in the area.

Don’t be silly, 6 years in Super League is plenty of time to develop new international players and make a difference to the quality of the national side

All they had to do was put the administration and infrastructure of an academy structure in place, set up a production line of talent development by identifying and recruiting kids of around 14 or 15 years of age and then progress them in yearly teams through the system for four or five years until a number of them play for the senior team and then enough of them are of the appropriate quality to bolster the French national team

If they can’t do all that in 6 years, the RL attitude is they have failed

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there was a decent standard of rugby league played in the south of France before Catalan Dragons entered SL. This isn't the traditional expansion team like Crusaders or Fulham BroncoQuins. The idea of them being in the competition was that it would expose French players to a higher standard and intensity than they come across in their domestic league, improving them as players and making the national side more competitive along the way.

France are further behind England (and even Wales) now than they were ten years ago when their domestic competition was still semi-pro IMO.

Iestyn Harris will be talking about his Wales squad and the upcoming Four Nations live on Real Radio tonight from 6pm. Call him on 0845 1052106 to ask a question or go to www.realradiowales.co.uk/.

Iestyn Harris will be talking about his Wales squad and the upcoming Four Nations live on Real Radio tonight from 6pm. Call him on 0845 1052106 to ask a question or go to www.realradiowales.co.uk/.

How many of the welsh team were born in wales?

Also how many bona fide welsh fans will there be at the games......10?

What is the point in having a seperate wales team, it's embarassing. Also, how the hell does iestyn harris fish out all these random players from the nrl or super league whos grandads brtohers dog did a turd in wales. Does he go through family treees, studying back generations.

France won't be that competitive with 14 full tiem players to choose from. If the RFL are serous about developing France then they need to introduce a second French team, or make it compulsory for every SL club to have at least 1 French player. Increasing France's full-time player pool by 13 would certainly give them a little more depth and increase they strength.

The ignorance of some people knows no bounds

But then again, the Australian team in 2000 was vastly better than the squad just announced

Completely agree, vastly better than the current squad named

The 1995 team being vastly superior to both of them. RL has gone backwards since the invention of SL.

A Welsh Rugby League side made up of players that came to our game for the money on offer is not representative of the strength of our sport

I would rather have the 2011 squad that contains genuine Welsh Rugby League players any day of the week than the 1995 squad... and that would be the same whether the Union game had gone professional or not

And as it happens, the end of the Welsh Union players coming to our game had nothing to do with the Super League, rather the professionalism of the other code where they could make their money openly. I have absolutely no idea why you would lay the blame on this on Super League

www.internationalrugbyleague.net ... per-wales-

www.internationalrugbyleague.net ... per-wales-