Don't know if it's the same situation with West Ham and Olympic Park, but City lease the Etihad from MCC for £3m/yr and are paying for a £1bn redevelopment of the stadium and surrounding campus area (which City do own). Any concerts or other events that go on at the Etihad, after the bands/whatever else is paid for, go directly to City's profits and City just continue to pay £3m/yr to MCC. City decide what goes on at the stadium.

Im certain City would welcome a Four Nations final at the ground next Autumn.

Totally agree. It's time we started to bridge the gap between France/Wales and us.

I mentioned in another thread the other day that compared to other major England teams we play less than half of the games that they do.
Since the turn of the decade England football have played 68 games, England rugby union have played 72 games and England cricket have played 73 games...while England rugby league have played 30 games.

It's nowhere near enough. And I don't know how many games France and Wales RL teams have played but I'd bet it is even much lower than England RL. That's not good enough, it's nowhere near enough for them to improve.

Three double-headers for the group fixtures

England-Scotland, New Zealand- Australia at the Olympic Stadium.

England-New Zealand, Scotland-Australia at St James's Park

England-Australia, Scotland-New Zealand at Anfield/Etihad

Final at Elland Road. Good transport links, right kind of capacity, in the RL heartlands.

You can't play the final in a downgraded facility from the other games.

Having all the games as double headers maybe a good idea though. The RFL will probably want a game in Scotland though and there will be murders if at least oneEngland game isn't in Yorkshire

Scotland v New Zealand - Ibrox
England v Australia - Olympic Stadium

England v Scotland - DW
Australia v New Zealand - KC

England v New Zealand - St James'
Scotland v Australia - Easter Road

Final - Etihad or OT

Think big

Do Scotland have anywhere near enough RL fans to have a single fixture up there? For their game against Ireland in the European Cup recently only 1197 attended.

Scotland played two games in Cumbria in the 2013 RLWC in front of 7000 but were they all locals or did the 2000 from that^ game come down to England for that leaving 5000 locals?
Ireland don't have many fans, in Cork at least, considering only 5000 turned up for their game with Australia in the WC a few years ago. Only just short of 1405 watched Wales win the European Cup a few weeks ago.

Going off those attendances if we were to have a single fixture for Scotland against anyone in Scotland, i'd imagine only 2-7000 would turn up so having a single fixture up there at a big stadium would look poor. Any fixtures in Scotland should be a double header.

It's that kind of small time thinking that means only 2-7k do turn up.

Playing at bigger stadia attracts the curious, not just the diehard RL fans. Create the sense of a big event, market the hell out of it.

As we've seen since RL took Internationals to London again from 2011, the crowds have been excellent.

On one hand, you've got what happened. A game in a second-tier tournament, played in the middle of nowhere (Galashiels), against a team of part timers/amateurs (Ireland), at a 4k capacity stadium, with no marketing. No wonder no fker turns up.

Or potentially, play the two best sides in the world (Aus/NZ) in the middle of the two biggest Scottish cities, in decent stadia, and market it.

Lets take the Eng v Sco game to Scotland where we can show any current or new Scotland supporter how England will dominate and make them look crap.

It should always be France involved in these 4 nations games over here imo.

IMO if we have one 2nd tier nation then we might as well have 2 ie…France and Scotland and just make it the 5 nations. This way we hopefully bring up the standard of 2 nations and they also have something to fight for in the tournament (in not getting the wooden spoon).

It will give the ‘big 3’ the chance to rotate squads and try new combinations thus hopefully not resulting in total whitewashes it might also mean the squads are fresher for the big games so we see proper intensity (that at times the series with NZ lacked)

Sure the matches with these 2nd tier nations might not be as exciting as the rest but we can target specific areas of the UK. Have a game in cornwall, cumbria, wales, Scotland, northern Ireland in small regional stadia.

To keep rotating one European nation in every 4 years is absolutely useless.

Yep Elland road is a right dump

Actually, I put Eng v Sco at the DW.

I see your point, as in theory it would be great to have more teams and games, however do people want to see The big 3 murder the other 2 sides by 50 plus points over 6 games? The gulf in class is simply too much to have 5 teams.

And yes, the 4 teams is pointless too unless we stick with France who have real potential in time to realistically improve.The tri series format of a few years ago where NZ ,OZ and England played each other twice with the winner to the final provides us with 7 games of the highest quality and is what we should revert back to imo.

Although Samoa were fairly competitive last year, I agree about the Northern Hemisphere sides.

I'm a big believer that the tier2 sides will only get better if they have the chance to play Eng/Aus/NZ, and have more regular fixtures throughout the year, rather than 3/4 games in the Autumn. Similar to how Argentina, Italy, Scotland etc have improved over in union.

The problem with Scotland is that they have no professional/semi-pro teams, few amateur clubs and generally low participation numbers. Ireland are slightly better in this regard, then Wales with their two semi-pro sides, and obviously France with Catalans, Toulouse and their league. Scotland earned their place, but I agree that the French are the closest at the moment to make that step up.

Yep totally agree with that if we’re going with 4 then we must have some consistency. Hate to say it but look at yawnion…The 6 nations stuck it out with Italy and Super Rugby did the same with Argentina and it works

The problem with adding more teams as well is that it starts to just become the world cup was 30 years ago. Some others have said that we need to stick it out and we do. The current system is okay.

I think the thing that should be changed in the importance of the European cup so that teams take it more seriously and actually want to win it. The last one had an average attendance of 2,800 and that was only cos of two 5,000 attendances in France. Market this tournament properly and get some stadiums filled. Have a host country so that it feels more like a tournament and also get some sort of qualification in place so that Serbia and Russia and other emerging nations can get into it. Create a similar thing in the pacific as well and then make it every 4 years (tournaments alternating so there is one every 2 years) and this will ensure that the winner qualifies for the four nations. Nations will develop along side each other then because of that prize at the end of it.

Two 2nd tier nations makes good sense, fully agree. Can't see a downside, really.

Yep have thought that for a while that it needs to either be a Tri Nations or a 5 Nations.
Have 2 from whichever hemisphere it's in. So if it were a 5 Nations here in 2016 I'd have Wales and Scotland in, as they were the last 2 nations to win the European Championship.
Is there a Southern Hemisphere equivalent of the European Championship? There used to be the Pacific Cup but I don't know if it's still going. Either way have a cup/championship of Samoa, Tonga, Fiji & PNG to decide the entrants.

It's either that or we have to pick say France and Fiji and develop them.

We tried that in the WC with Ireland - played at at Munster's Thomond Park (holds 25630) and only 5021 turned up. It looked terrible.

I'm all for aiming big for England - I think we should play at the Etihad, Sid James' Park and Olympic Park every time we have a test series/Four Nations/World Cup here - but not for Scotland/Wales/Ireland. I think we have to be more realistic with them at the moment.

That's why I put the Scotland games to be at the DW/KC vs England (25k-ish), and stadia in Glasgow/Edinburgh (areas where lots of people actually live) for their games vs NZ/Aus. You can't go off a game at Galashiels vs Ireland with no marketing and write it off. It has to build from somewhere, take the SL Grand Final as an example.

The game in Munster was a still a record crowd for an RL game in Ireland, wasn't it? Does it look anymore terrible than the games they've been playing in a 7k capacity ground in Bray in front of 1,400? No chance.

Think bigger/better.

Easter Road and Ibrox are just way too big for Scotland to be playing single games in. Ibrox has a 51k capacity, England struggle to fill stadia of that size, let alone Scotland.

If you want a Glasgow venue, then you're realistically looking at Firhill (10,800) or Scotstoun (9,700). Getting either of those full and rocking is an achievable target and would create a much better spectator atmosphere.

Tynecastle is probably a better venue than Easter Road for an Edinburgh game (17k capacity as against 21k, more closed in at the corners to keep the noise in)

I'm all for aiming big, but there has to be an element of realism. If you want to use the bigger Scottish stadiums then it really would have to be as a double-header IMO.

After the success of Scotland's crowds in the WC, why not keep one of their games in Cumbria and try for Brunton Park, Carlisle for the England game ....close enough to the border, capacity of 18,000 i think ?.

We should leave things alone in terms of structure of it all (number of teams). One of our problems as a sport is the constant chopping and changing of everything. The Four Nations is a pretty solid thing now, we should leave it as it is.

What we need is some mid-season international games.

Its only their own fault for not qualifying but it is a travesty that France are not in this comp. Had they been given one or two home games they would have came up with very healthy crowds and at least been competitive if at close to full strength. What is the point of Cats in SL if we're not committing to creating a strong French international side? They should have been given the spot, for certain.

We should swap Wales for Scotland, they have just won the Euro cup, have two semi professional clubs and are actually developing players. It's crazy to include Scotland next year.