Cracking post pop tart.

To answer the op, as many as possible, although in the northern hemisphere there is only England, plus France (who are some way behind)
Then we have Aussie and NZ, plus the prospect of making anouther couple of teame in PNG and maybe Fiji, however, these additional teams will be packed with players that most of us consider Aussies or NZ players.
Whilst it may not be a popular view amongst the games traditionalists, the only way that the game will prosper in the long term, is to develop the international game and an additional French domestic team would be the logical next step.
After that it becomes uncomfortable for fans at the lower end of SL as there would need to be some sacrifice of heartland clubs to make way for say a couple of Welsh teams, plus expansion into Ireland/ Scotland.
It's one hell of a conundrum and making France stronger (and any other expansion areas in the northern hemisphere) would weaken the English game in the short term.
This would be the only realistic way of increasing the games profile and it would take a fair amount of determination plus investment, and i'm not sure that either of these is present at the moment.

Wales not causing a stir? They are the current 6nation holders and did it with a Grand Slam. I agree they are in a bit of a dip at the moment

Even Italy came into international RU with far more domestic interest and playing clubs than, say, Scotland or Ireland in RL ( Google it)

I don't think anybody has a fundamental problem with the likes of Scotland having a national team per-se; I'd be delighted to see them play an important part of the international game - it's just that, for me, I can't see where the current set up leads to real international growth.

People say "well you've got to start somewhere" - which is superficially true, but can anyone [ireally[/i visualize how Scotland goes from here to being a decent international force...[istrongly supported by the Scottish people[/i?

We all want a big international game - the argument is about how to get there. Personally ( and probably wrongly, I don't know ) I feel we can do more at international club level (and do it more easily, utilizing the existing fan base) and we should focus more effort on that. Is this pessimistic? I don't think so - let's not worry about what you're 'supposed' to look like as a sport ( or worse still, try to ape RU ) - but just look at what we have - great passionate club support ( and in this area I think we're much stronger than RU, at least in England) and build competitions around what people passionately want to see. I'd queue overnight for tickets to watch my club play the top NRL sides, but not to watch England play Scotland, nor France for that matter. It's not true that the media is only interested in big games between nations themselves. The Champions League proves that.

Eventually, the more attractive and exciting our domestic and international club competitions look, the more people in Scotland (say) might want a piece of the action - one day leading to an SL team north of the border and eventually a meaningful Scotland side. Paradoxically almost, I think the game looks too far ahead for growth, instead of trying to maximize everything we can possibly get from the game as-is - which in turn, I believe creates the wider growth that you wanted all along.

A thriving international game is a pipe dream and the attempts to stage internationals hinders RL more than it helps. The shambolic games staged over the closed season made the game look amateurish at best.

Creating Welsh sides and Scottish sides will do little for the club games and at best it will be a generation or more before any real head roads can be made.

The only way forward for RL is to make its club competitions better and maybe even expand the WCC to more clubs and try and create a 'champions league' type competition that the NRL clubs are bothered about.

The change in SOO eligibility is really going to help the PI sides from now on.

Unfortunately RL has no where to hide, you can't stay close with penalty kick after penalty kick like that other code. Hard to see anyone getting close in next decade. Png, France and Fiji are best hopes but without significant investment and clubs in SL/NRL then not much hope.

Ps a competitive ashes series with GB winning would be enough!

This.

It all down to how you define "competitive". Do you mean they could win the world cup or do you mean that they can play against an elite side and not get humiliated. Either way we are behind Union regardless of how you view it.

The main problem as usual is self-interest. The NRL could easily help have more competitive sides by allowing NRL clubs in PNG and Fiji for example. But they are very self-interested and have no interest in helping the international game.

The RFL do have better intentions but incompetent management has seen a number of teams fail in Wales that should have succeeded and as a result there are concerns about letting Toulouse in the league which hampers French improvement.

So to answer the initial question we need more than 2 "elite" clubs, 4 would do and 12 "competitive" clubs so we can have a sensible world cup.

I think calling it a pipe dream is a bit unfair. But it is hard to deny that there have been a lot of short cuts taken and little investment into the grass roots of developing nations for anything to improve.

I am a fan of an extended WCC, but as I said in my previous post Aussie self-interest will prevent this from happening. Maybe it could be introduced as an alternative to an international tournament. Having a world cup every 4 years leaves you with 3 tri-series tournaments between each World Cup, maybe a WCC in the 4 year cycle (maybe the year after the World Cup) would break things up.

WCC as a one-off tournament (even once a year) wouldn't get the extra media profile such an otherwise great idea is capable of. It needs to be like the Champions League in soccer, or the Heineken Cup with games throughout the season, to keep up season-long interest - it's all about building profile in a continuous way - as people start writing about this big international club games, suddenly they take an interest in the participants and start writing about domestic games around the same time. As I've said a lot, travel isn't as big a deal as people make out, because in groups of 4 (say), you have 6 fixtures, but only 2 of those are overseas - you can play your two overseas away games in one trip. It also helps solve one of the challenges of the domestic season - that is how to make the regular season more important. Qualification and favourable draws are the rewards for high finishes.

A one-off tournament isn't a terrible idea, but it wastes an opportunity. Say you have a big WCC game coming up - let's say Melbourne are over for both their two away games at say Wire and Saints. Both Wire and Saints would not only have the WCC games themselves but they'd have bigger gates for the preceding domestic games (and if they won or came close, the subsequent games). Also, media would start to take an interest in both those clubs in the weeks before the 'big' WCC games. Even with just 4 teams per group, we'd have 4 NRL clubs coming over at different times during the season, each playing 2 big games against domestic clubs. Spread nicely through the earlier part of the season it would greatly boost media interest.

Likewise, your club would have a scheduled trip to Aus, with two games to play - something that lucky fans might put on their once-in-a-lifetime agenda, especially if the clubs offered 'fly and stay with team' travel packages.

It's a shame we don;t have the money in the RLIF to fund proper torus for France, PNG, Fiji etc. All well and good the big three creaming the profits and playing each other every year but the 2nd tier nations need it more and need more opportunities to play against each other.

World Nines (every year)
Ashes Series (every two years)
World Cup (every 4 years)
5 Nations (every two years)

that would be a reasonable start to rekindle interest (if GB could actually win something of course!)

The problem being, the World nines ans 5 nations would be met with too much apathy.
We probably do need to persist in including PNG/Fiji (in Auastralia) and France/Wales in England.
However, staging 4 nations every 2 years and alternating with some kind of expanded WCC, may be a good way foward ?