Joined: Apr 14 2005 Posts: 1696 Location: Great Sankey, Warrington.
And here is one of the big problems with the international setup. The general lack of promotion and overall apathy, but who's going to be bothered when it's clear who's going to win?!
Joined: Sep 15 2014 Posts: 1148 Location: Jack Rabbit Slims
Complete waste of a weekend....pointless 1 sided fixture with a tiny crowd that is not even on tv
Then on the other side of the world, you have 90,000 in Melbourne watching the 2nd State of Origin game, no wonder the Aussies aren't bothered about international RL
Mr Snoodle wrote:Complete waste of a weekend....pointless 1 sided fixture with a tiny crowd that is not even on tv
Then on the other side of the world, you have 90,000 in Melbourne watching the 2nd State of Origin game, no wonder the Aussies aren't bothered about international RL
Yep I'm afraid it does all seem a bit of a waste of time. Hate to pick up an injury.
Utterly pointless fixture.. if a free weekend is available in the super league calendar year, then give the players a break. Everyone knows it’s a tough game and players play with niggles, player welfare is a must, why risk players in fixture against a nation where the playing pool of players is small and low on quality.
I honestly could not care less about England vs France. For me it's just a weekend without any good rugby to watch. lucky we had state of origin men and womens to watch to make up for ir. Only bonus is the rest and recoup for most of the squad, to get injuries and niggles rested and healed. I would have rather watched the exiles play, i enjoyed them games. Also wouldn't this have been the ideal weekend for Wigan and leighs missed game, regardless of who was playing for England/France, rather than forcing them to play so many games in such a short period of time, guess player welfare doesn't apply here.
Joined: Feb 10 2012 Posts: 5978 Location: Stuck in 1982
Here's a counter argument, but don't the majority on here and in English RL generally bemoan the Antipodean view that Internationals v England/GB are worthless, a poor second to State of Origin and isn't the poo pooing of playing France tantamount to the same thing?
This lack of a cohesive international calendar is often cited as one reason that our sport is held back commercially and not taken seriously by the main stream, that and the parochial set up and demographic of SL. Abandoning it completely certainly wont fix this, but supporting the 'smaller' nations might help, admittedly the wheels of progress are slow and the same arguments have been around for far too long.
We shouldn't forget 'our' collective history and the fact that Rugby League aided and abetted by the French Unionists was banned by the Vichy Government in France. I take comfort that we are the rebellious, anti Establishment Code, whilst admitting that this will only take you so far and ultimately limit opportunity...as 'the house always wins'.
In the first instance, I get that people would presumably want to see a competitive, exciting game of rugby rather than a blow out and that's about our squad selection and management, as we too need a pathway at international level for our group of players. We are rightly worried about the depth of our playing pool does our resistance and reluctance to engage in this match send out any signals to sports minded youngsters? I'd say definitely and not in a good way.
There seems to be a sea change in how the South Sea Islanders view their international 'scene' these days. I always got the idea that NZ was the team of choice if there was one, the status quo can be challenged.
IMO the fault here is not the fixture but the marketing and accessibility to view it oh and our collective negativity.
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