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.

The trouble with the WCC is all the excitement is this side of the world only.

The insular Aussies see us as inferior and see it all as a waste of time.

One step should be having the WCC 2 weeks after the GF, so that players that won it are the same players that compete in it.

The aussies are insular about everything though, internationals or the club game. If rumours are to be believed they have scuppered the mooted GB tour next season and they didn't want to play internationals in 2012 which meant we got the awful European competition which saw 3 blow out scores and about 8,000 at Salford watching the final. At least with a WCC competition it would be the clubs who decided rather than the ARL, thought it would obviously have to funded somehow.

I agree ideally the WCC would be played at the end of the season, with same squads and coaches etc and with no disruption to either season. I don't think that would be taken too seriously either though because all they players would be too busy concentrating on celebrating their GF final win than they would on the upcoming WCC.

True, but I think with it made an end of season comp, maybe in alternating hemispheres we (the top SL teams) would compete. We need to do it consistently over there. As Craig said the strength in RL is in the in game. We should focus on our strengths.

That sounds great until you think about the logistics of it. One team's fans will have bugger all chance of being able to save up and get over for the game, plus the clubs would probably want a bit more time to prepare. I suppose one way to do it would be to extend the WCC to the top x amount of teams rather than the GF winner, at least everyone gets a bit more preparation time that way