I would love to see a 5 nations competition between England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and France. Ok England will dominate for a few years but once players commit to a nation and the competitions profile increases, more and more players will become more competitive to fight for a GB jersey to play test series against the aussies and kiwis. I like the idea but it will never happen unfortunately because RL fans don't give a toss about the international game.

Firstly,

Canada's Latest Home Attendances: 4,630 (vs Jamaica) 2,300 (vs Lebanon), 4,675 (vs USA)
Featherstones?: 2,816 (vs Keighley), 2,068 (vs Swinton)

And to think every single Canadian player was amatuer that's some effort against a team that has decades upon decades of tradition in a heartland Rugby League area (no disrespect aimed at Fev here). But if according to you the international game is dead then so is the championship and a few members of Super League.

Secondly,

Allowing a bunch of players from the north of England and east coast of Australia with certain heritages to represent your country doesn't necessarily attract crowds, although these players may be proud as punch to rep their heritage. Pal, let me speak from experience of following Wales, watching a team with Lloyd White, Gil Dudson, Ben Flower who are all young Welsh born lads means more to the watching public than the pathetic team we mustered with no proper Welsh lads together in 2007 that failed WC qualification... that team? Hit no passion and touched no heartstrings with me, just like most of the players would never represent my country again. Why? Wales to them was a quick trip to Australia for a world cup.

Thirdly,

By opening Origin up to every man and his dog with plenty of nationalities represented infuriates Australians who are represented by Queenslanders and NSWelshman, imagine the example of Sam Kasiano was followed on for anotehr decade.. it'd be a joke with 'Queensland' and 'NSW' just being names to which mean nothing to half the players.

Lastly that WC bit,

To an extent i agree. Having 6/7 strong nations in a WC is vital. However doing it via heritage players and ring-ins doesn't work. The international game needs time! Tonga and Samoa cant rely on heritage players forever they have to pull their finger out and start producing local kids and slowly feeding them into strong domestic comps as Tongan players that will represent Tonga as the nation that gave them their start in the sport. This will take time but believe me will have a HUGE benefit on the international game in years to come... I'll predict that in 15 years Serbia will be one of the strongest nations in Europe outside of the UK.. the groundwork and player development pathway they have is constant and flourishing year on year it's not the overnight success story that naming Chris Bridge and Ben Harrison is in naming your Ireland team for a quick fix that has no prolonged impact.

The same with Canada, groundwork and marketing has put the game in the publics mind there. The interest will boom and the demand for the sport will grow, so with it the demand for on-field success. What will bring this success? A strong domestic competition and youth development system that will be properly supervised to a high level. How to manage this cost? Heck look at their attendances. Their attendances = Ticket revenue and potential sponsorship e.g. the ones they have already tied up in Universal Music (Canada) and Coors Light.

To be fair to Tykes/Rhinos I think there's some decent ideas in there, especially the 5 Nations comp which I think could be a goer if it were to be mid-season, it'll never work post-season.

That's some really promising crowds for Canada as well, what's the domestic game like in Canada?

Canada have two comps, one based around Toronto and he other in British Columbia, with 4 and 5 teams respectively I think. Originally they struggled to fulfil completing every game however the attendances of the internationals speaks volumes in the importance of exposing the Canadian public to our wonderful game... They're almost building from the top down in order to expand from the bottom with some exposure and money to the top again even stronger.

That's great, there may be an opening in Canada as they seem to like their contact sports.

SOO is going to pretty much kill the Int game in the Southern Hemisphere so I would concentrate on trying to get 3-4 competitive teams out of Europe. Will be interested to see the appetite for Int RL the new ARL commision has, if any. At the least I would love to see us pursue a World nines every pre season and bring back Ashes 3 match test series. We can live in hope!

The ARL Commission is supposedly working on rules for Origin eligibility. John Grant at least seems to understand the nonsense re someone like Kasiano devalues the Origin concept, as much as it weakens NZ. The problem is that you'll always have one state weaker than the other, and the management of that team being willing to bend the rules to get some potential star into the team. I suspect no amount of tinkering with eligibility criteria will change that.

NSWRL won't let him, they need Kiwis and Fijians to keep close to Q'land!

I'd like to see a mid-season 5 Nations in the northern Hemisphere of England, France, Wales, Scotland & Ireland. The same model as Union, 4 games league format. If we do away with the Exiles thing then I'm sure it could be fitted in.
And a mid-season 5 Nations down under of Australia, NZ, PNG, Fiji, Samoa/Tonga/CI under the same format.

Then an end of season format something along the lines of:
Year 1 - GB v NZ 3 test series
Year 2 - GB v Aus 3 test Ashes series
Year 3 - Aus v NZ 3 test series
Year 4 - World Cup

I certainly think the end of season format is do-able, and the 5 Nations in the northern hemisphere should be possible. I'd be surprised if the NRL would be happy with the league being disrupted for a southern hemisphere 5 Nations to help out the other countries but I wish they could see past the end of their noses.

All of these ideas for international expansion are pie-in-the-sky without respective domestic leagues. What is the point of trumpeting X number of international sides playing RL if only a tiny handful of the players are born outside of England, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands?

I’d agree with a slight change to

Year 1 GB + France tour southern hemisphere
Year 2 Four nations
Year 3 Auz, NZ and a Pac island side tour the northern hemisphere
Year 4 world cup

(the way i would structure it)With the tours being full tours once every 8 years, either SL, or the NRL start and finish the season one month earlier. If, for instance, last year had been a GB tour to Australia, SL could have started 8th of jan, or even as early with the traditional boxing day games (which would give a couple of rest weeks within the season) finishing the season on the 10th of september instead of the 8th of Oct, we could have had the bulk of squad in Aus by the 6th of sept, with the GF players coming the week after.

10th of sept is SL GF,
21st Sept GB (minus GF finalists) v one of the clubs which didnt qualify for the NRL play-offs,
24th GB V Samoa (in Samoa)
28th GB v one of the clubs eliminated from the first round of the NRL play-offs
1st Oct GB v PNG (in PNG)
5th oct GB V one of the eliminated Semi-finalists
9th Oct NRL Grand Final on stand alone weekend
12th Oct GB v Indiginous All Stars
16th Oct GB v Fiji (in Fiji)
21st Oc GB v A Pac Island select side

28th four nations starts, finishing 19th Nov.

The International game is expanding rapidly.

In 2000 you really couldn't find more than half a dozen countries with genuine comps - Aus, NZ, England, France, PNG and Russia - all other countries had a few halfd attempts at games and most of the teams for the 2000 WC were made up teams.

12 years later and we have genuine comps in over 20 countries, and some like Lebanon, Fiji, USA and Serbia have multiple comps.

USA have as many as five competitions - AMNRL, USARL, Jaxsonville 4 team comp, Hawiian comp and mid west development games.

In raw terms, there were less than a dozen teams outside the top 5 nations in 2000, and now there would be 500 teams in up to 30 countries.

Kevin Gordon is half Filipino (his mother). By picking him you will be depriving the Philippines of one of their stars, (along with Craig Wing, who also has a Filipino mother, and who we are waiting to play scrum half or hooker if he returns to rugby league.). Gordon at full back and Wing at scrum half, along with Gold Coast Titans Matt Srama (half Filipino, half Polish) at hooker, would be a formidable spine combination for the Philippines. The Philippines also has South Sydney's star Andrew Everingham available to play centre or wing.

By picking Gordon for Scotland you would be wrecking the prospects of rugby league in the Philippines, an especially reckless move on the eve of their big Test against Thailand in October!

Are you prepared to give up our current funding from Sports England by declaring our selves Great Britain?