Instead we are having a bye round. How inspired.

Over 2 weekends which means to me it benefits the teams that are off in the 2nd week

Thanks karetaker
I really wouldn't have England v France (with half an England team playing France) or a Lancs v Yorks game. Clubs don't want it, speccies don't want it ... we all don't want it. You can't whip up false enthusiasm that is not there. Flaming pointless. Daft idea no matter who came up with it. Playing in half empty stadiums does the game no good & an extra few hours for half the team listening to our esteemed coach won't help us beat the Aussies.

Same here! I actually preferred the 'Exiles' concept, home-grown v imports was a far better idea for me, each side had something to prove at least. And the exiles had nice kits!

Yeah i liked the Exiles as well

How about England v England Knights?

This could aid selection for the Ashes series and could be a full blooded battle as existing England players would have to play their best to stop the younger and fringe England players from taking their spots. The younger/fringe players would be out to bust a gut to show Wane what they can do against the more experience/current England players, and ultimately everyone will gain some experience of playing in a hopefully intense (kind of) international match.

i'd be very up for this, possibles versus probables, only issue is you've got clubs releasing twice the amount of players for say, against france.

I was in favour of the revamp of the Roses concept that David Waite tried to push as a vehicle for selection for the GB team. In the first year it was well promoted and the clubs seemed to take it seriously. I remember going to the 2001 game at Headingley, Lancs won and there was some interest in seeing how Neil Turley would get on as he was breaking all those records in the championship with Leigh, and had been called up for Lancs.

The next year though the interest had massively fallen off. You could see the concept wouldn't last. Whilst you get people in Yorkshire who regard their county as the entire civilised universe, nobody in Lancashire really has a "Lancashire" identity, certainly not in the rugby league parts which are largely Greater Manchester or plastic scouse. So nobody really cares about Lancashire. The towns which would identify more with a Lancashire identity like Blackburn and Preston don't play RL.

I'm not in favour of any "made up game" between our very small pool of UK based players. I have seen our support for these games recently & when it has come to the crunch the species don't turn up. It wouldn't work in other similar sports either ... so it's not done. Only games v. OZ, NZ and now Samoa & maybe Tonga will drag a speccies out and that's with all our best players in the team.

I fully get where you are coming from regarding player pool it’s something that really needs to be worked on as a priority, sure Wigan and a couple of other teams are getting some good youngsters coming through now. Also it’s good the likes of Tonga and Samoa are getting stronger.

War of the Roses is pretty much State of Origin and look at how massive that as become now. Now I get we can’t have that overnight but it’s something we should be looking to. But yes right now I agree it won’t work. It doesn’t mean we should just stick it on a shelf, we have to get rid of the loop fixture somehow.

I realise we think we must do something but just occasionally it is just best to do nothing (it seems a bit defeatist I know). State of origin is brilliant but our fan base/player resources are nothing like in Oz and we speccies are so wrapped up in our own clubs.

I agree with Smiffy.

Just putting an extra game or two to clutter the fixture list isn't going to make us more competitive against the Aussies.

We sometimes talk like the Australians are good because State of Origin is such a tough competition. I think its the other way round. The Aussies are so good international competition is too easy for them so they needed to make their own competitive contest, and Origin is it for them.