I seem to remember the owner of the South Sydney Rabbitohs touting a top 4 from each comp meeting in a WCC comp in Vegas. Has its attractions

I don't see why the WCC can't be taken to another country such as the USA, and include the All Stars rules like the power play. I think the Yanks would enjoy it. I thought the All Stars match was brilliant.

Just on Manly, don't underestimate how strong their pack is. Watch their finals game against the Storm to see them monster a reasonably good NRL pack. Leeds' game hasn't been built around a big pack in all the years we've been champions. I do agree that SL fans generally tend to underestimate just how physical NRL sides can be though.

As for expansion of the WCC, even in concept you couldn't possibly go past 4/5 SL sides against any NRL teams. The lower half of SL really is very poor in comparison.

Having said that, from what I've seen of SL so far this season, there seems to be more structure to some of the attacking play than sometimes in the past - a lot of dummy dunners and good attacking lines giving halfbacks plenty of options. The top end of SL looks a lot better than it did even 3 years ago.

I did an article on this for southstander! leeds.rlfans.com/readarticle.php?article_id=1758 Having it in Las Vegas would be great exposure for our game.

I did an article on this for southstander! leeds.rlfans.com/readarticle.php?article_id=1758 Having it in Las Vegas would be great exposure for our game.

Is the expnsion of the WCC to promote the game in new non RL areas or to allow genuine competition beteen the top sides from the 2 major RL playing nations ?
If the comp is held in Vegas or Dubai, then this precludes the regular RL fans, but may bring in new sponsors fans from other countries.
Also the RFL would be coining in the folding green stuff and they should really think abouth where to invest their new found wealth.
I believe that our game, below Super League, is is danger and more needs to be done to help the national leagues and assuming the regular season format is changed to accommodate
the expanded competition, all but the top 4 clubs will lose a slice of their revenue, which over time will damage our domestic competition.

Both!! It would be a real money spinner for our game that could massively improve Grassroots and National Leagues!!

I'm good with that, but suspect that the grass roots would not benifit that much.
Our game seems to be going down the same path as football, where the top clubs play ever more lucrative games and the rest try and catch up and realistically this will never happen.
The teams in the National leagues are in danger of stagnation.

I am for an expanded WCC but it would have to not increase the total number of games in the season otherwise it will be short lived due to player burn out.

My preference would be a shortened league season. 27 games is far too many games for a league determined by a top 8 playoff. Usually we have a pretty good idea after 20 games who the better teams are. Games in the last couple of months in the season can become predictable. You would also think that the Magic Weekend is dying a slow death so that could free up a week.

Another one of my pet hates it that we only have two openly contested trophies these days. The remaining non qualifying teams could play in a second knockout tournament (the league cup perhaps) maybe something like the regional group stage format of the old Northern Rail Cup. Restriction on international players could be added to give England players a proper off season.

Both cups could be played at either end of the year. The WCC at the end of the season would link the domestic and international seasons together very well. While playing at the beginning somewhere warm would allow us to start the Superleague in March/April when we do not need to deal with all the frost and snow.

Yes 1997 all british/aussie clubs took part played over 6 rounds in both hemispheres.

No British club got beyond quarter final. Brisbane beat Hunter Mariners in final

1997 will live long in the memory



This was an expanded WCC which was organised in such a way that 4 Super League sides were to qualify for the Quarter Finals no matter how poor their results were. Consequently, St Helens and Bradford embarrassingly qualified for the QF's despite losing 6 out of 6 games against Australian sides. London Broncos qualified on the basis of 1 win out of 6 and Wigan on the basis of 2 wins out of 6.

By contrast, Penrith were eliminated and didn't qualify for the QF's despite winning 6 out of 6. Neither did Canberra with a 5 wins out of 6 record, or Canterbury with a 4 out of 6 win record.

I don't think there's any need to embarrass ourselves again with another expanded WCC.

If they can find a way of making this work then I think its a good idea. If you look at sports like football and union they're international game is popular because of club competitions like the Heineken cup and the champions league. A competition like this can only be good for the game.

All our European teams play in the CC, there just aren't enough good French teams at present.