It's down to the clubs to try to get more people through the gates. People have less disposable income now than they did 10 years ago never mind 20. So they spend it on other things. Some SL clubs are charging £25 a ticket. For my family (Mum, Dad, Me, 2 sisters it would £110 on tickets alone if the kids were £10. That's a hell of a lot to be shelling out a week or every other week, not including food and drink and travel costs. So rightfully some people decide that money's best spent elsewhere. Make it affordable first. It's hard because clubs need the cash to survive. The product on the field needs to be good, RL used to be entertaining then they brought in structure and the wrestle which really dulled the game down (great to play as it made it harder to break down a defence) but not good for the fans. Now they are speeding up the game again and we've had arguably the most entertaining Grand Final in years even though there weren't many tries. Playing like that will also put bums on seats.

I would have agreed with your point about the British Lions about 40 years ago in the 80's and 90's when GB was the pinnacle of the sport here. Long gone are the days when kids wanted to be Davies, Hanley, Offiah because of their exploits in a GB jersey. The GB concept was dead in the water the minute they chose an Aussie coach and Aussie players. I love Wayne Bennett, easily the worlds best coach for representative rugby and has proven it again with Queensland this season. But he's not a GB coach.

Having a successful international side would be great for the game no doubt but that doesn't encourage the kids to play anymore. We have a big stage, and that is the Grand Final. The TV games. The local clubs. This is the pathway now a days. If you ask kids these days they want to be the next Tomkins, the next Walmsley, they want to be like Burrow, Sinfield, Hall. Because of their exploits at club level. I wanted to play because I loved the Bulls and in particular Robbie Paul and James Lowes. You get kids playing at a young age because they want to play with friends then it snowballs from there, you get right into the club and you feel a sense of belonging. Not because England managed to beat NZ in the Baskerville Cup.

For what it's worth the GB concept is 'romanticized' and I would love to see it back properly as I loved the early and mid 2000's games. But I also think having an Ireland, Wales and Scotland could provide players with an opportunity to play international rugby (maybe at a poorer standard) who wouldn't normally get selected by GB.

These days rugby is fighting against other things to occupy peoples free time. Especially kids. I was born in 1995 and in the early 2000's there was nothing better than going training on a weekday and playing winter rugby. Now kids have Playstations and Xbox's, Tik Tok and Fornite etc. Parents work for longer these days and may not have the free time to take their kids to training/games etc. It's getting harder to get kids involved.

Obviously I've heard most of that before, it's similar to RU down here. Kids, do tend to think and feel more local, adults, to get most of us interested it takes a bit more than that, and to get more people with more disposable income to watch RL, that's only going to be done through international matches. There are hardly any Welsh bred guys playing for Wales, there are even fewer Scots and Irish bred players in those nations, I think in any case.

Explain how that will be done by international matches? I'd be interested to see how that works? If there's no structure in Wales for example from the bottom up then Wales can't produce players and can't have a successful team. If Wales suddenly became competitive it would suddenly increase participation in Wales. They did well in 1995 at the World Cup but there wasn't anything after? There needs to be a build of the amateur game first, like they are doing in Newcastle. At the moment there's development in Ireland with Longhorns RL and Galway Tribesmen etc. Theres a born and bred Irishman in Ronan Michael whos at Huddersfield at the moment, hopefully this shows there can be success for Irish players.

Wales are probably further ahead than Ireland and Scotland and have two clubs at the moment in North Wales and West Wales. I think from the outside looking in West Wales are at least trying to play local Welsh players, they've suffered but how good was it when they got their first win? This will help majorly as they are getting exposure to the lower leagues. If this continues over the next few years whos to say West Wales can't be competitive in the higher positions of League 1?