www.canadarugbyleague.com/site/e ... p?id=10110

www.canadarugbyleague.com/site/e ... p?id=10110

Thats good news for rugby league to have other countries announcing teams,making a bigger world cup will help get more people interested and make our game bigger!!

Unfortunately TT, the RLIF/RLEF have determined that Canada did not meet the criteria to play in the World Cup so we will have to wait until 2017 for the opportunity.

maybe due to the fact that their is,nt as much money in this sport as their is in others to fundate them into the world cup,

also being a low income sport will be difficult to price for fans to be able to even watch the games on tv never mind go,i duno one this 1.

It's due to the fact that they didn't have a large enough domestic competition to meet the criteria and enter the qualifiers. They do now but the fixtures and competing nations have already been decided. It's probably the right decision, and if the domestic competition continues to grow then they should have a good shot at qualification in 2017.

nice,would like to see more countries getting involved as it would be more fun for the fans!!

I think they need to change the criteria with regards to domestic competitions. It's all well and good allowing you in with 4 teams, however Italy, for example, have a great chance to qualify, and their domestic league is only three weeks long!

u want countries like japan and Sweden, Norway etc,that would be mint!!

its a difficult one - it would be great to use the 2013 RLWC as a means to entice players away from Union here, but perhaps 2017 is a better long term goal...

Yeah at least then it gives time to plan ahead.

Poaching RU players on a short term basis is not something that any RL nation should be looking at doing.

Headhunter

Fair enough, why don't you come here and try and recruit a few people off the street and see if they want to start playing rugby instead? Or how about going into some of the schools here? I am sure you will find lots of people and kids queuing up to find out more about this sport they have never heard of, after all they don't have ice hockey, Canadian football, soccer, basketball, baseball, American football to play instead do they?

To describe Canada as a "rugby nation" is pushing it just a bit, don't you think (even RU never mind league)? The phrase beggars can't be choosers springs to mind. No-one said anything about a short term basis, the hope would be that having go themselves into playing league with the carrot of the World Cup to promote and publicize the game, would persuade them to throw their lot in with league on a long term basis.

You are apparently from South Wales and have a USARL avatar so one would think you would know something about the difficulties and realities of expansion in foreign parts. But Canada may as well be on the moon as far as being comparable to South Wales is concerned. Tell you what, why don't you go and try encouraging a few kids to play curling in Ebbw Vale and see what joy you have....

That's just an extremely strange and totally unwarranted post. Do you really think that allowing Canada to participate in the WC so that they can artificially 'entice RU players' would be the right thing to do? Where do you think RU gets players from? I admire the work being done in Canada, and they seem to be going just fine at the moment without 'enticing RU players'. Of course expansion is difficult, if you can't hack that then don't get involved with it. Either way, moaning about it on here won't achieve anything.

It would be great to see USA rugby league being more populated so other people can get involved!

Headhunter

You really are quite a patronising man/woman. Being of such evident high intellect and perception, I am sure you have already figured this out and you don't need me to tell you.

I would be grateful if you could enlarge on your assessment that the work being done in Canada is going "just fine at the moment". I am intrigued to know what information you base that assessment on. Are you involved in Canadian rugby league at all? What do you particularly admire about what we are doing? I mean lets get into specifics here and not nice sounding airy-fairy theory. And a question for you - exactly how many non-rugby union indigenous players are currently playing league here in Ontario?

RU of course gets its players from a well-established school, club and provincial set-up that has been here for many years. Of course it would be great if rugby league in Canada did not have to go down the rugby union convert route but unfortunately there does not seem to be another option, unless, O great one, you can educate me and the rest of the folks on the ground here.

In terms of enticing rugby union players with the prospect of playing in the World Cup, perhaps the phrase "encourage" might be a more appropriate one, or incentivise. Of course, the last thing we want is mercenaries, this is simply a tool to accelerate the development process. It would also make marketing the game here a lot easier by linking the domestic and national game to the international stage. But, not being part of World Cup qualifying comp is not going to be the end of the world, it would have been nice to have though. 2017 will come around and we will see what position we are in then.

To be honest I don't see much philosphical difference between Canada filling its ranks with union converts and Crusaders populating half the team or more with Antipodeans - both are simply a means to an end, aren't they?

I am not of course coming on here and moaning about the fact that expansion is difficult (besides I am not really sure expansion is the right term for something starting from scratch - its really more applicable to geographical spread in an existing set-up, Wales being a good example). I am though moaning about people like you who make simple generalisations from thousand of miles away and in effect belittle the effort we are putting in here to get league off the ground by any means possible.