hopefully by then Wales will have half a dozen players playing in SL.

Ireland and Scotland will still be english/aus rejects. Cook Islands/Tonga/Samoa/Fiji will be the same locals plus Aus/NZ rejects.

Eng/Aus/NZ/France/PNG will be able to field proper teams.

USA & Russia at least have domestic teams and should be able to field homegrown players, but will get battered horrifically.

Lebanon should be nowhere near the comp.

Why would that happen? France and PNG have always fielded predominantly native-born players.

They do need to revive the domestic player rule they dropped last time, and tweak it. Considering that countries name a roster of 24 pleyers, each one should have to name a minimum of 7 domestically-produced players on their tournament roster, players who played their first senior (i.e. open age) RL in that country. They could be players still playing in the domestic league or they could now be playing pro RL somewhere else, but they would have to have started playing senior RL there. That would leave a maximum of 17 roster spots for players who qualify purely due to heritage or residence. Once the roster is named, no additions or replacements should be allowed for any reason (including injury) unless they maintain or increase the team's domestic player content. In short, 7 or more domestically-produced players on every team's roster at all times, no exceptions.

I like that

Australia would struggle with that with their Fijians, Samoans, PNG-ians and former Kiwi internationals. Ditto with NZ with all their Pacific islanders and Australians.

I don't think we shoul go with the group of death format this time. It's unfair to put any other team with the big 3 because they will just get knocked out, we need around 10 years before another team will be able to compete.

We also can't have a group of just 3 because not having all 3 big teams getting through would be poor for the success of the tournament IMO.

We should go with 3 groups of four, aus, nz, and eng all in seperate ones, and then the lowest 3 seeds play off to get one team through. Not sure where it could go after that. That would be the fairest way IMO....

..... but also for the success of the tournament we need big games against NZ and aus, so I have no idea how its going to work.

Your ignorance is showing. In 2008 Australia's roster included exactly one player not born there. Petero Civoniceva was born in Fiji but moved to Queensland with his family as a baby and grew up there and played his first senior RL there. The Kiwis had a total of four not born there, 3 born in Australia and 1 in Samoa. So the Kangaroos had 24 domestically-produced players and the Kiwis at least 20 (it would be 21 if Setaimata Sa grew up there and played his first senior RL there but I haven't been able to find out about that). It clearly wouldn't trouble them at all.

Why?

why?

In an idea world the RLWC would be in summer, mid season thus avoiding bad weather and making the event colourful and far less gloomy than Oct/Nov.

There would be 2 competitions, Division 1 and Division 2.

e.g. Division 1, Australia, NZ, PNG, France, England. 4 Games each and 3 qualifiers.
Division 2, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Lebanon, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa + 1 qualifier, e.g. USA or Russia.
These then break into two groups with group winners playing off for the right to make the semis. Essentially the same as last time but more teams, more even games and more interest.

By playing the games in summer, double headers are much more attractive and families would be more keen to turn out for fixtures (if ticketing is correctly priced and venues are good).

Again, in an ideal world, clubs would see this is essential to the game and could either alter the start and finish to the SL and NRL comps with a mid season world cup break or in world cup year take 4 midweek games each to free up a month?

Oh, hang on? Ideal world? RL? DOH!

Double headers in a World Cup? Do you want it to be a laughing stock????

Ideally no. But to keep costs down (i assume) they used them last world cup and are a no go in autumn

Good call 14 teams really does make it a proper world cup now!

You're mistaken, the games were actually spread out among many different venues. You find all the details herehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Rugby_League_World_Cuprl

Fair enough. My mistake. Could have sworn there was one or two but your right. As it is Im against them like you, but they are not even an option in autumn