The date talked about is also Grand Final day...

I'm finding it difficult to believe that 90k people would be interested in this. Would England RU fans be eager to watch this? It would be interesting to see where their allegiances would lie: towards their code or country?

What would RL get out of this? Apart from the financial benefits it is claiming, it's hard to see what else we would gain from it.

After what has been the most successful RLWC of all time, which has shown how important international RL is for growing the sport worldwide, & both established and developing nations now urging the powers that be to provide them with more regular, meaningful international games (of RL), the first thing Nigel and the boys at Red Hall try sort out is a b***dy joke game against an international team from another sport. You couldn't make it up.

Don't stop there Nige. How about expanding the concept into an alternative 4 Nations tournament by inviting the Chinese national badminton team & the Polish speedway team for a '4 sport' tournament.

Please stop wasting time and effort on hare-brained schemes that do nothing for the development of international rugby league & put the same effort into developing our game. In my opinion, gimmicks like this have the potential to damage the integrity of the game.

If the players are each going to be paid the 50k the report says why won't the NRL players be involved?

Don't believe it until the RFL announces something.

Rothfield is wrong more often than he is right and like Pinkerton says, he spends most of his column inches talking up soccer and talking down RL...

If we lose the game it makes us look inferior, do we really need the confirmation?

Proved to who, yourself? Thats one quote that shows the intransigent arrogant nature of a large amount of RL fans.

If true, I think it's a great chance for RL to higher its profile. If there is no financial downside I don't see what we have to lose.

I think if both codes are looking to creating or experimenting with some kind of hybrid game then the 7s competition is the route to go. Its mostly just pure open running rugby, a few little tweaks to the rules and you have a decent product IMO of course.

Will the NRL release them?

The RFL have already responded to various Aussie journalists with a flat out denial that any such talks have taken place.

Rothfield is a poor excuse for a journalist.

Proved to the thousands of people who watched the game for the first time and then came back for more or tweeted, Facebooked, wrote column inches etc...

I didn't need convincing, the product on the field is more watchable than that of any other sport in my opinion. The issue for Rugby League, apart from the historic ones, has been the inability to administer the sport in a professional manner for longer than 5 minutes.

I find your post somewhat insulting, do you think you have the intelligence to make such a sweeping statement about one individual you know nothing of let alone the "large amount of RL fans" you also mention.

Up yourself much!

Both the RFL and the ARU need the cash. From a purely financial point of view this makes sense as a concept. Given the desperately poor financial health of RL in this country we need to do everything we can to get some cash into the game.

Awesome idea and GREAT to see the real national team again.

What apart from a money making idea will this bring to our Game. what did the cross code games between Wigan and Bath prove in the 90`s , apart from the fact that ours is a more enjoyable sport to Watch n Play and Fitter and faster.

You call that proof that our game is more attractive, again were back to opinion. Subjective opinion isn't conclusive proof. Did we compare the amount of social media interaction with RU autumn internationals? Or tickets sales and ticket costs? Their is no such thing as a superior product. It's a case of marketing the game in very competitive market place. Not an easy thing to do especially with the games limited resources.



Sort of like proves my point.



Goes back to what I was saying, what kind of resources do we have compared to other forms of entertainment out there? I think the game is behind the 8 ball to start with. If this game does ever come off it would be a cheap way of raising the profile of the game. They may seem like gimmicks to us hard core fans but to the casual entrainment seeker we may just lure a few in.



Oh give over "insulting" are one of these professional offence takers we see a lot of in modern society? Your passing of opinion as fact I think the "intransigence" description is appropriate in them circumstances.