Internationals is where RU are light years ahead of RL, it's where they get most of their money from too. They can play 'friendlies' in front of 80000 at twickenham where we struggled to get 25000 for World Cup games.

You can't blame players for wanting to play in that kind of arena.

I've been saying for a long time RL needs a set international calendar that we will stick to. We try concepts like the exiles for a couple of years and forget about it.

Everyone will have their own opinion of what we should do but I like the idea of introducing an RU style 5 nations. I think there is more chance of players that would be willing to play for Wales, Scotland and Ireland if they had regular fixtures. There is also more chance of clubs like the scorpions & crusaders being a success if their international team played regularly.

Without going into too much detail or giving it too much thought as to where fixtures would fit in:

5 nations (England, France, Wales, Scotland & Ireland) during the season every year
5 nations (Australia, New Zealand, PNG, Fiji, Samoa/Tonga) during the season every year
Every 4 years a World Cup
Every 4 years a 'lions tour' down under post season

With 2 full off seasons for players to recover.

Most of all it needs us supporters to actually buy into international RL.

From the interviews I've seen I think the fact his wife is pregnant and therefore wanting to move back to the area closer to family was a big factor. There definitely will be an element of PR spin to his interviews but I genuinely believe him about his desire to play for Wigan. It's his boyhood club that he grew up supporting and has played for since his teens. He's a very good actor if the passion he's showing in some of these interviews isn't genuine.

FWIW the RFU haven't funded Sam Burgess' move to Bath.

It certainly does make it clear as day that we need to improve the prestige of playing international rugby league. Bringing back GB tours would be a good start IMO. Whilst I agree that the other three home nations don’t really bring much more to the table in playing terms (there’s only Ben Flower I can think of who isn’t English but might make a GB side) people just seem to get behind them more. Let’s get back to packing out DW, Huddersfield etc for £25+ tickets as we used to.

Ideally I’d like to see the calendar go tour, four nations, tour, world cup, rinse and repeat alternating hemispheres with us competing as GB for all but the world cup.

Add to that every year we could have a home nations tournament of England under 23s, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and France; with something likewise taking place between the island nations down under. The games could be used as curtain raisers to ashes games etc where possible. The team that wins the tournament the year before the four nations is held in their hemisphere gets to compete in them.

An expanded WCC would be great too but I suppose it depends how much the aussies buy into it. I wouldn’t have any more than three SL teams involved in order to mitigate the chance of batterings. Perhaps on tour years we could do something like:

Week 1
A – SL 2 v NRL 3
B – SL 3 v NRL 2

Week 2
C – SL 1 v Winner A
D – NRL 1 v Winner B

Week 3
E – Winner C v Winner D

I think a big reason that Joel is back is that Saracens have Bosch and Barrit now firmly established as their first choice centres so there was little chance of gametime for Joel next season anyway. As such Saracens are probably glad to get a very highly paid player off their salary cap who is no longer first choice. Also from Joel's point of view there would have been little prospect of him getting anywhere near the same salary again when his contract was up.

He has been overtaken at Saracens and will have had no chance of getting back in the England team, and several have overtaken them there too such as Eastmond. Joel has been really unfortunate with injuries at crucial times in his RU career that have hampered his progress. I still played for England though which in itself is a great achievement. I think this is one of those deals that suits all parties.

More needs to be done with the England Knights IMO. They should run a developing nations tournament in parallel to the elite nations one. This season the Knights could go down under and play a tournament against PNG, Samoa and Tonga with the games being played as curtain raisers to the 4 Nations games. Then when the 4N is over here run a similar tournament featuring Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Italy.

If the NRL are insistent that Australia won't be playing internationals in 2016 (which is why the mooted GB tour is apparently not happening), then I would focus the intentions in to arranging an 8 team WCC over here. We can't have another European international tournament as our only international RL like we did in 2012.

I hadn’t realised the NRL had taken that stance, that’s good of them!

I mean 2015 not 2016, and yes that's what seemed to be the reason why a tour isn't likely to happen.

Not heard anything about this awful idea for a while either! www.espn.co.uk/australia/rugby/story/208329.html

Not heard anything about this awful idea for a while either! www.espn.co.uk/australia/rugby/story/208329.html

For international rugby to take off we need Australia pushing the agenda or more to the point the people in charge off the NRL and their sponsors.

Australia like to spout off that it is our fault and to a lesser extent the Kiwis that the international game can't draw interest due to us not being able to compete but they show no willing to change or help out when they are in the strongest position to do so.

It's easy to just coordinate a complete shut down mid season for 1 month.
All players realised to fly to their appropriate side of the world.
6N each side
England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy
New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, PNG, Cook Islands

Aus because of their dominance play SOO that month, they could possibly extend it to a 5 game series.

Other players not selected get a month off to rest, have operations, recover injuries.

Even have a Europe v Oceania 3 game series end of the season

If that happened then the majority of SL fans would would take a break from attending games. You can't force international RL to become popular by playing full time professional players against teams made up of semi pros and ozzies who qualify under some dodgy eligibility rules. No doubt hardly any of the ones who played in the World Cup would be available for a mid season tournament in the UK. The idea you have proposed would be good but requires years of further development in France, Italy and the other home nations first. It would also be incredibly difficult to work a 30+ game season around such a competition.

I believe what Joel says, you might say he's bound to say that, but he actually is under no pressure to say anything he doesn't feel. He speaks with a great deal of honesty and integrity.

It's clear as day that he loves the club as does his brother, they both achieved all that was out to achieve in their first spells at Wigan then decided to try a new challenge.

It's a massive positive that Joel is back, and could help us on the way to more success over the next few years imo.

In regards to the international scene, it's common knowledge we're way behind RU. But, we are making progress the RLWC surprised even the most negative of supporters expectations. We just need to keep that momentum going in the right direction.

IMHO expanding the WCC should be the first step.

I've been saying this for a couple of years now. ATEOTD intl RL is very important but for the forseeable future we only have 3 competitive teams. Our strength as a sport is our club game. I would love to see a full on end of season 8 team WCC as group stage, SFs and final. And I would defintely have a lot more interest in going to watch Wigan/Leeds/Saints/Warrington v Melbourne/Souths/Sydney/Brisbane etc. than I would going to watch England put 60 on Wales.