An international side versus a club team on tour would be much more appealing to a lot of people than the WCC. I used to watch the WCC with excitement, but ultimately, it doesn't mean very much to most Australians. An expanded WCC certainly would not. Also, it would undermine the finals series and Grand Finals of both nations - unless it was run roughly like soccer's WCC, which uses the champions only from each country. We'd need to add the Catalans, Crusaders and Warriors just to fill out numbers, and if those teams hadn't performed well in NRL/SL, it could undermine the concept.

Rugby Union successfully stages Lions tours, where the Lions play midweek tour games against clubs in front of good crowds. The Wallabies, All Blacks and Springboks have all played tour games in recent years against British or Irish clubs, in front of excellent crowds. The Wallabies played and defeated. Tuesday November 3rd, 2009.
* rlCardiff Blues 31-3 at Cardiff City Soccer Stadium. Crowd 14,622 (capacity is 26,82icon_cool.gifrl. Tuesday November 24, 2009. This year, the Wallabies will play Irish provincial team Munster and English Premiers Leicester Tigers.

South Africa payed and lost to
* Leicester Tigers at a sold-out Welford Road Stadium, crowd 24,000. rlLeicester won 22-17rl (the video shows how passionate the Leicester club fans during the game and when they won). Friday November 6th, 2009.
* Saracens at Wembley, crowd 46,281 (capacity 90,000). rlSaracens won 24-23rl (the other video doesn't have the crowd noise, but features a performance review by Andy Farrell, ironically)

New Zealand's All Blacks played Munster to a capacity 26,500 crowd at a redeveloped Thomond Park, Tuesday November 18, the mid week ABs winning narrowly. Tell me the electric atmosphere of this game wouldn't be good for RL

union players have the energy to play tour games against club sides because they spend 80% of the game laying on the ground...

A few of the Manly guy's that went on the 2009 WCC tour absolutley loved it, conversing with the locals in Leeds.It's up to the Australiasian club's to make a big deal out off it like Manly and the Roosters did.

From memory 40 Manly fans went over there to the UK and the next one I'd think will get close to 100. I'm hoping to be 1 of them

what does 17 englishmen,in GB shirts, beating NZ in a 3 game series,do to build up the hype for the 2013 world cup??....england beating NZ on the other hand lays down a marker...GB has no relavence in the current international league structure...



firstly...take ireland off that list...they want nothing to do with GB

secondly....in the unlikey senario that wales or scotland produce a talent good enough to displace 1 of the 17 englishmen that would make up a GB team in the next couple of years,then this lad will be wrenched from the welsh or scottish sides while these side are trying to develop their own sides..

GB will only be worth bringing back when the welsh and scottish start producing players good enough to warrant GB selection....like i keep saying...if theres 17 englishmen on the field...play as england cos thats what they are..

Haha true, it was. If England do tour in 07, would be good to see a couple of tour games like the Warriors and the Maori. The Maori always present a strong challenge, the Warriors and England would still attract a strong crowd and play a strong game without their frontline test stars.



Well that was Lote Tuqiri who dived out of play to win the game for Leicester Seriously though, the Roos would have played clubs in 2001 were it not for the scare after 9/11. On a Tueday night in October 2002, the Kiwis attracted a good crowd over 12K at the Boulevard against Hull - good effort really.

Often wondered this would an England vs Celtic Nations be beneficial to all parties?

I mean for England obviously and the other home nations.

One of the thing's I would like to see taken from Union is the 'Grand Slam' tour

If NZ beats England 3 nil, that's a pretty awful marker then!



OK, but have Northern Irish people suddenly left the Union?



Again, as I showed above, not true. Welsh and Scottish reps won't have to miss any games for their team.



How many Welsh/Scottish need to be in the team until it can be called GB? What number, and what percentage of the team should they make up? What about players from the midlands, the south, London? As I said, it never seem to matter that there were no Welsh, Scottish players in the GB team for decades before, so it hasn't suddenly changed.



By that logic, since there are 17 Northerners in the team, play as Northern England. The rest of the country, the sports press, and Rugby Union people, regard the England RL team as a Northern team. By your logic above, once you start to get a consistent number of international class players from the midlands, the south, London, then play as England.

BTW for the London 2012 Olympics, the FA will run the rlGreat Britain soccer team supply only English players to GBrl. It will still be called GB.

I wouldn't like to see them play the Warriors. I don't even like the fact that they're called the NZ Warriors. It affects the Kiwi brand IMO. Same reason why I disagreed with everyone that wanted to call the Crusaders "Wales Crusaders" or whatever. International tours should play international teams and build up representative rugby.

Shut up you idiotic northern monkey.

Wellsy,
I cant do it like you do where you quote every sentence that suits you and come up with half a reply.

I will say this
Thorman played 11 games for Parramatta 5 years ago.
Mathers was an up and coming superstar in SL and played 4-5 games for the Titans
Tansey was the most bizarre signing of all but did ok for the Newtown Jets with a couple of games in the NRL.

What is the common theme of the players mentioned above?
They were paid pretty well match payments and no Australians had heard of them.

In Contrast...
Some old busted ar*e Aussie or never has been Aussie comes to SL in massive numbers and its the second coming of Christ by the fans.
How many Aussies or Kiwis in SL this year again?

Ellis is on less than he would get in England, Burgess could be anything depending on Crowes involvement.

How much did YOU pay for Berro? in his twilight years 31 now, or Fitz at 33 hardly in their prime are they?

I will let this thread die here from my part Wellsy.
They say Knowlsley Road is closing soon, have you been in all four sides of that ground? if not you will need to go there soon for the last game and move around a bit.

Take care pal.

J

There's a place for both. Tour games can be more competitive, generate more revenue, be logistically easier to plan and run, and be more meaningful to established RL communities than certain test matches, e.g. Big 3 tests against certain emerging nations.

I don't quote every sentence that "suits me". I quote every sentence that I disagree with (which was most of them). Which ones do you think "didn't suit me".

Ironically, the thing you're having a go at me for here (which isn't true) is exactly what you've done in this reply (i.e. ignore my reply to your comment that a crowd of 31k for a 4N Final being "a poor effort"icon_wink.gif.

Again, contradicting yourself.


That was my point.
You didn't "cherry pick" the best of English players like you said. You picked up some duds as well.
How many of the dud Aussies that come over here do you think the English public have heard of and are paid loads? They are called "cheap options" for a reason. You can pretend that we think they're all superstars all you like. The fact is, most fans ridicule their signings.

It happens both ways.


So they could be paying him big bucks then for all you know? Rusty even came over to England to convince him to sign, and you Aussies are wetting yourselves at how good he is.

Again, works both ways.


Me personally? Nothing other than the contribution I make to the club with my season pass and merchandise purchases!

Berro wasn't in the twilight of his career when we signed him, unless you think a 27 year old is "past it". As I said before, he was a current Aussie international, and the current MOM holder at the GF. He was in his prime.

Fitz was signed on a one year deal to aid in the development of the players around him with his work ethic (much like when we signed Kearney, which got us a Challenge Cup). Again, a World Cup finalist when we signed him. Maybe not his prime, but a continued level of excellence and a world class player, and still proves to be (which is why we resigned him). Rumours were that Roosters wanted him back. What would you have said then? Remember, you took back a 33 year old Jason Smith and kept him for 3 further years in your competition full of apparently only young up and coming Australians...


Because you've had enough of getting found out and embarrassing yourself? 5.29931640625:5