The NZ games haven't been played yet so we can't say whether or not they will be sold out. I expect there will be 3 well attended games.

8000 and something was reasonable against France considering the team they put out.

I gave two examples of popular games in this country involving SP Island teams. Can you give examples that did have "pitiful" attendances.

Yes the international game is not RL's strength, but it has the biggest potential growth and it is achievable.

Agreed.One of the most tedious sites in Union is watching scrum..collapse..scrum..collapse..scrum..collapse..penalty! why? who knows? crack on after 5 minutes of boredom.No thanks.

I agree, though I blame Sky for that. They don't do it with their Union coverage yet strangely do for their League coverage.

Yep. There's absolutely no reason to have scrums "like they used to be". Firstly the players are fitter and professional now so I'm sure someone in the team could master a bit of hooking and another job in the team. And there's no reason for the front row to be fat knackers. They'd just be slightly stronger and slightly less mobile than currently.
Or not. It can be the clubs choice as to what tactical route they go down.
There have been big packs and mobile packs in RL even during contested scrums. There's no reason why suddenly all clubs would go with big fat sods as props. In fact they couldn't because they'd get run around in the rest of play. But it gives a club an option they don't currently have.

There's also no reason why contested scrums in League would be the same as contested scrums in Union. They're different situations with different priorities, different types of player and with different rules. They weren't anything like the same when RL had contested scrums so there's no reason to assume they would be if we had them again.

IIRC the one thing that kept the scorelines against Australia in 1982 to the levels they were was GB winning the scrums.

I'm not advocating a return to contested scrums, but there are lots of areas where attacking sides get too much advantage - short kicks into the in-goal leading to repeat sets, inability to strip the ball in the tackle, no striking at the PTB, allowing players to walk miles off the mark to PTB, defensive lines sometimes being set over 10m back, not touching the ball with the foot at the PTB etc etc. You can add to that Australia's insistence on NRL interpretations (and refs if possible) whenever Australia play, which is letting lunatics run the asylum IMO.

Well, quite, and enforcing current laws would do a lot more good than introducing new ones.

Yep agree with all that.
I'm not saying contested scrums are the only solution just that I think we need some form of allowing teams to compete in another area than currently.

And the stuff with the reffing is getting ridiculous. The bizarre and, frankly, bent VR decision in last years 4 Nations along with plenty of other on-field decisions is just the latest in a long line of refs bending over and taking one for the teams from down under. There were plenty of dodgy calls that benefitted the NRL teams in this years World Club Series and we even saw Silverwood whoring himself out to the NZ team in a sodding friendly.

Get rid of scrums, and instead have a tip-off as they have in basketball.

Great, sounds like a line-out.

IIRC that series was the first one with sin bins available, and both hookers went for five minutes for repeated early strikes in the first Test? Max Krilich hooked for Australia, think GB started with David Ward, ended with John Dalgreen in the third Test? Can't remember who played in the second - David Watkinson?

I disagree with the last statement - once every ground is full for each game and participation numbers grow further then you can focus on 3-4 games at the end of the season. The club game in the UK has a long way to go before it reaches anything close to its potential.

As for your attendances - there were a number of games involving the SSI countries where attendances were less than 10K during the last WC.

Was it Noble? He captained the 84 tour down under.

Good call. Just looked it up, it was Dalgreen in the second Test, and Noble in the third.

Great Britain used over 30 players in the three-match series.

It's simple - a regular, annual tournament whereby the European nations play off against one another. If you want to see how that'd work, google 'Six Nations'.

As has been said repeatedly, people who are not already RL fans *do not care, and do not understand why they should care* about Warrington v Widnes. It's two teams from places they've never been to and likely never heard of playing a game they've rarely watched. It's really easy to say 'we should fix the club game', much harder to make it happ. And while we sit around in the hope that a sensible reorganisation of the club game miht happen, we are getting outcompeted in our biggest growth area (Internationals).

There needs to be:

-Yearly 5N tournament in high summer (England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France)
-End of season 3-Test tours (v New Zealand, Australia or a combined 'Pacific Islands' side)
-Fixed international eligibility rules so you can't leave Samoa or Tonga for NZ or Aus, or the home nations for England.
-Early season match against The Exiles (although RFL should actively approach the Barbarians to take over this match and get the Baa-Baas brand into RL)
-Yorkshire v Lancashire series.

This wouldn't be a success overnight, it'd require a hell of a lot more games to be played away from the Heartlands, but it'd provide a regular series of games that would have a big enough crowd and media draw to warrant greater attention, sponsorship etc.

It would also disadvantage bigger clubs more likely to suffer from International / Rep call ups, but given we want as competitive a SL as possible I don't think it's a bad thing if Leeds were to occasionally lose at Belle Vue as had 6 players away with England.

Yes, fully agree. The biggest stumbling blocks are

a) our inept administrators, and

b) the fact that they'd get very little help/support from the insular Aussies.