If I worked for the RFL I would bust my balls to get Wayne Bennett on board in some capacity.

Forget Craig Bellamy....he would never come here.


but Wayne Bennett would....at a price

Look what he did for the Kiwis last year in the world cup



The b astard

Agreed. If we have any desire to make England RL a success we should do just that but sadly the RFL have not got a clue. The game is run by idiots.

Part of me feels sorry for the English fans.

They deserve better at international level than the garbage they have been seeing.

Well I think I am going to have to return the favour Barry and put that in the old signature.

Barry_McKenzie in empathising with English fans shocker.

Despite what I may or may not think about England, SL and their national RL side I will admit that the fans do deserve better at the international level.

I was home for a few weeks during the last World cup and my flight to Sydney was full of England RL fans off to follow their team whilst having a good time. I doubt very much if the same amount of Aussies will fly to England for the next one.

If nothing else I do admire their dedication!

It was admirable the support we took over to Australia. I guess it just proves that the interest and support for the International game is there which makes the way our game is run at the moment more annoying!

I wonder if the same amount of supporters would have gone if it had been held in France or somewhere?

As well as knowing deep down that Aussies are the best people in the world and you poms aspire to be just like us (hence your compulsion to buy and wear NRL shirts and drink in Walkabouts

)I think most Poms love Australia almost as much as we do.

I've seldom flown home on a flight thats not full of tourists .......yet coming back to London I was once on a Qantas 747 that had 90 passengers.....on the whole plane

I wasn't complaining though....along with most other passengers I had a row of 4 seats to myself.......I got 9 hours uninterrupted sleep between bangkok and Heathrow

You're from Heckmondwike really aren't u?

Not unless that place has a Tube station with 'Dollis Hill' written on it

In response to your original post I agreed at one point regarding France, of course they're gonna get tonked.
But if you think about it, it's not that bad a thing, it puts them on the international stage and in the Union 6 nations, Italy used to get tonked all the time, shows them where they need to be.
Being involved regularly against the big guns will only help them improve and so what, they get tonked for a few years, its not like Aus arent capable of sticking 50 on England is it.

But since Italy joined the 6 nations exactly WHAT have they ever won???

Franc ewould be competitive at RL but for 2 things.

Their players are pretty poor.

Their 'coach' is not really a coach.


Id sooner have seen Wales play in this 4 nations rather than the French.

See IMHO the reason France look so poor shows how far the Aus/Eng game has come over the last ten years or so.
They've now got more full time and better players than they had years ago and look worse than ever.
It will take time and yes Italy are really poor but they're improving year on year, you should have seen em a few years ago Barry, only need a bitta Benny Hill music and you could watch it for comedy.
France will really improve if they get a second SL team, as it stands at the mo, give it 5 years and Wales will be much better