Good point jc , all the more reason to ' even ' thing up if at all possible IMO

but how do you even things up without holding back the more wealthy clubs ?.

Well we were discussing the International game , but even at club level , there is no other choice , or the game will die

oops .

sorry...i ain't willing to disclose private e-mails i've had with the RFL hierarchy....not yet anyway

I would suggest you're slightly wide of the mark. When the RUWC took off in the nineties, the game was far from the fully proffessional sport it is now, meaning smaller teams like Romania, Fiji or Western Samoa, when fueld by WC induced passion, could prove a real test for the 10 or so core nations. A few years into the proffessional era and an experimental England team put 145 points past Romania (30 penalties, 16 drop goals, 1 try and 1 conversion, charlie hodgeson recording 140 individual points). Now most of the WC fixtures including smaller nations are a formality.
Argentina and to a lesser degree Italy have improved, but most minor nations have fallen away.

England RL tonking France doesn't do them much much good, but it does England even less.
I'd replace MM with an event at Cardiff/Murrayfield that had a few fixtures like
England vs other nations
France Vs Wales
Cumbria/Championship England vs USA or other emerging nation
Scotland vs Ireland
Play the internationals on the Saturday, then maybe something like a club 7's tournament on the Sunday?

Abandoning? Well, we weren't playing Wales. Have we abandoned them as well?

And how do we know we're not playing France at the end of the season, like when we used to play Wales?

And don't you agree that Wales vs France is a far more enjoyable fixture to watch than Wales/France vs England?

And don't you think we will get more than 6-8k? Which is all that this French mid-season test has attracted against England.

Worth more in what way?
Money?
Crowds?
TV viewers?
Media exposure?
Development-wise for England?

The only thing that would be more is the points scored by England.

Credibility?

I doubt I was alone in cringing whilst watching our recent "credible" internationals against France.

I doubt I was alone in cringing whilst watching our recent "credible" internationals against Australia

Yet for some reason there would be outcry if they refused to play us anymore, despite our recent record against them being similar to France's recent record against us.

lol....its been 5 or 6 games since we last beat australia and we beat the current world & 4nations champs as often as they beat us.......its been 21 years since france last beat us...yep thats similar records...lmao

Let's look at some facts.

Last season, England lost by 20 points away in Melbourne (with some very dodgy refs calls), and 14 points away in Wellington.

In the same year, France lost to us 60-6 in England, following on from us beating them 66-12 in Paris the year before.

We have beaten both NZ in a series and Australia in one off games in recent history. Remind me when France last beat England/GB? They didn't even win the European cup in 2010 so didn't qualify for the four nations.

Compare the two situations all you like - fact is, it's a nonsense comparison.

our record against Australia

34-14 loss, 46-16 loss, 26-16 loss, 52-4 loss, 33-10 loss, 12-23 win, 20-6 loss, 26-14 loss, 12-8 loss, 24-12 win, 4-44 loss, 18-22 loss, 20-23 loss, 12-18 loss, 64-10 loss, 20-12 win, 12-40 loss, 8-28 loss, 22-2 loss, 42-6 loss.

In the last 20 games, we have a total of 3 wins

France may not have beaten us since 1989 but i doubt we have played much more than 10 games against them since then

our last competitive game against france was 34-12, pretty similar in score to our last game against Australia (which you missed out, as it was between the two results you quoted)

I can see you're not going to be convinced, despite all the facts suggesting we are far more competitive with Oz/NZ than France are with us.

Lets agree to disagree.