oikee:

i am not going away, sorry marv, i tend to think a bit different to you, this might be good, might be bad, take a look at the 5 nations, will you watch any games, i know i wont be, could not give a hoot, only europe will bother.

No dont go away Oikee, as I say I m happy to talk RL to anyone, anywhere, anytime

I will admit, I wont be watching the 5/6 nations, mainly because I hate union and Im jelous of how they manage to get 50,000 to a match in rome against france

oikee:

take a bit of the interest to america by throwing in a couple of pacific nations playing america, after a couple of years with the promotion of the rabbits and leeds over there with the australia day, it will get in the heads of the yanks, when they look to see if they are playing anyone, they will see some pacific islands and maybe a lesser oz or england team, now and then, so slowly, over say the next 5 to 7 years, they will be very interested to see how they are going,

Again mate your assuming the yanks will take to the game america is a country of 200 million or something, at current the Americans only have 5,000 registered players.

I agree they certainly should be playing Internationals against Island nations, they are beginning to get too strong for the likes of Japan and the West Indies this will improve the Quality of the Americans.

 

oikee:

with setanta showing nrl and super league plus origin, you might have enough to go on by then,

Im not sure if there showing NRL in the US mate I know they dont show it in Setanta Ireland only the UK, If they are  

oikee:

hopefully, the island nations will be more involved, through the players in the 2 top leagues help, start really cutting the grass for league in the future, they love the game, and they are very strong in that regard.I just think that if you flood the market with all these miny nation cups, then you tend to get a bit tediuos, to much rugby is a bad thing in my opinion, keep the tournaments small, but helping the other nations build will only add to the excitement of who can beat who, not playing each other all the time, come world cup, you know the outcome.

Im not sure I understand you Oikee on one hand you say America should be playing lesser Aus/Eng teams and the Island nations in mini cup comps, you then say we shouldnt flood the market with mini comps, then you say we should keep the tournamet small, I dont understand mate?

I agree builing the smaller nations will add to the exitement because we can bring them closer to the big 3 and France & PNG, then teams are capable of turning eachother over.

My personal opinion is outside Aus/Eng/NZ ANY team can beat the other on the day Fiji can beat France, France can beat Samoa, Samoa can beat PNG PNG can beat Ireland, I think im pretty sure who will win the WC but im looking forward to the games outside the supergroup.
 

oikee:

This is why i say we should be looking at not having the tri nations and think more about regional to area games, even if you put together a weaker team.

I agree we should have more regional games i.e

Pacific 5 nations with Aus/NZ/PNG/Samoa/Tonga/Fiji 

Europe 5 nations with England/Wales/Scotland/Ireland/France possibly Russia

but the tri nations is the best thing about rugby league at the monent, i look forward to it every time, last time I had to get up at 6 am to watch the games! 

 

oikee:

After all, we are convict riffraff.

you certainly are all of you

joke guys ;) 

I think they will go this path, as you said europe with england and oz with the pacific, which is good, what i meant about a weaker oz and uk, we are always banging on how we could pick a second australia team that would beat any country, so this is what i mean, send out a second team, and let them play the other nations, then they know how close they are getting, to the likes of oz, put our money where our mouth is, this should get the other nations up to scratch a lot quicker, playing good competition.  It would also keep the interest going as when we get beat, we will be saying hold on, this is not suppose to happen, just a thought, lots of people over hear think this way. I personally dont think that the other 2,3 top nations are that far off us, so the second team would only be helping the smaller nations. Well i have just about covered everything, unless you have some more, i really think we are on the right track, we have shot ourselves in the foot so many times , and we still keep walking, hard to stop something as good as league, as good as it has become, we have tweaked the rules to suit, and it has become the perfect comp as it is, i got me tickets to the final, my pommy wife will be backing the lions, my samoan mate will be going for samoa, and his greek wife, well, she is a diehard ozzie fan, one state of origin hooked her for life, hehe.

oikee:

what i meant about a weaker oz and uk, we are always banging on how we could pick a second australia team that would beat any country, so send out a second team, and let them play the other nations, then they know how close they are getting, to the likes of oz, put our money where our mouth is, this should get the other nations up to scratch a lot quicker, playing good competition.  It would also keep the interest going as when we get beat, we will be saying hold on, this is not suppose to happen, just a thought, lots of people over hear think this way.

 I see your point and I agree that 2nd string Aussie/Eng/NZ teams should be playing teams like PNG or France regular, I disagree those 2nd string teams  will get beat at any time but it will bring the other nations closer.

My main point I didnt understand oikee was you said "you dont want lots of mini tournaments, only world cups" then you say "its ok to have smaller comps like euro/pacific 5/6 nations"

oikee:

I personally dont think that the other 2,3 top nations are that far off us, so the second team would only be helping the smaller nations.

 Tonga are ranked number 4 in the world at the moment, in 2006 my county (state) team (cumbria) beat Tonga and my County (state) are the third best (of 3) in the UK so I DO think the other nations are a good way off England and NZ........ Australia would murder them.

oikee:

i really think we are on the right track, we have shot ourselves in the foot so many times

Yeah I think we are on the right track in 10 months we will see a great show of competetive, exiting International Rugby League only after this comp should we say "the next one should have 16 teams" or "the next one should be in France" because there is a lot of people around who are ready to bash this World cup for various reasons

 

oikee:

my pommy wife will be backing the lions.

Your wife has the right idea oikee, I will be cheering our boys too!

England Expects
 

Back again,  i maybe did explain it better earlier in my posts, i have not looked back since, i am on a rollar coaster at the moment, blogging rugby sites with commen sense talk. To put it simple is we dont need the 6 nations stuff, play in smaller groups so we dont suffocate the real world cups, but as i have mentioned, get away from the oz,uk, nz all the time, yes it good to see but if we keep going down this path, it is only obvious the other nations will never catch up, we can go hammer and tongs once we hit the world cup.  Lets help the other nations catch up faster by taking the games to them more, that is where the 2nd teams come into the picture, yes we will still have the tri nations, but we should also put a bit more light on other games, and by having the 2nd comp in these games, you would create interest for showing them also. See this is the problem as i see it, people need variety, if you bore them with the same old structure then you become your own worse enemy. 6 nations sounds great, come world cup, yawn, i seen them play this year, yawn, might watch the lawn bowls tonite. Yeah, cumbria, me mrs is a geordie, i flew to england about 7 year ago, now i dont know how you think about australia, but, we went to whitby and i visited the tan hill, highest pub england, just up on the moors, then went in to stockton on tees, i thought this place was like heaven on earth, i loved it, really i loved any where we went , yarm had instant appeal , i thought it was the best little town i had seen, you can tell i did not get around much, then went to york, anyhow to get to the end of the story, heard someone on uk t/v saying stockton was , well a dump, Little do they know, this would be prime real estate over hear in oz. Look to be honest, the north is just awesome. It is like here we never travel to mexico" victoria" why would you bother, all they do is bung on about afl. Aussie rules to you.

oikee:

To put it simple is we dont need the 6 nations stuff, play in smaller groups so we dont suffocate the real world cups, get away from the oz,uk, nz all the time, yes it good to see but if we keep going down this path, it is only obvious the other nations will never catch up, we can go hammer and tongs once we hit the world cup.  Lets help the other nations catch up faster by taking the games to them more, that is where the 2nd teams come into the picture, yes we will still have the tri nations, but we should also put a bit more light on other games.
See this is the problem as i see it, people need variety, if you bore them with the same old structure then you become your own worse enemy. 6 nations sounds great, come world cup, yawn, i seen them play this year, yawn, might watch the lawn bowls tonite.

I see what your saying but I disagree if for example you have a world cup in 2008 then in 2009 we are looking at a 4 nations (Eng/Aus/France/NZ) after that we should be looking at a different comp, then something else again......then back round to the World cup again, I dont see how people will get bored of one International comp per year 

oikee:

Yeah, cumbria, me mrs is a geordie, i flew to england about 7 year ago, now i dont know how you think about australia, but, we went to whitby and i visited the tan hill, highest pub england, just up on the moors, then went in to stockton on tees, i thought this place was like heaven on earth, i loved it, really i loved any where we went , yarm had instant appeal , i thought it was the best little town i had seen, you can tell i did not get around much, then went to york, anyhow to get to the end of the story, heard someone on uk t/v saying stockton was , well a dump, Little do they know, this would be prime real estate over hear in oz. Look to be honest, the north is just awesome. It is like here we never travel to mexico" victoria" why would you bother, all they do is bung on about afl. Aussie rules to you.

I never been to Australia mate but Its second on my list of prioritys of places to visit purely because of Rugby league though, so I wont be visiting Victoria i'm sure

BTW I have geordie relatives myself, been to Yarm a good few times too. 

I Like the idea of the seconds teams playing lesser teams. I think it would be great to have AUS A, ENG A, NZ A and FRA A touring every year to countries like tonga, fiji, wales, russia etc. Maybe even put them in 2,3,4,5 team tournaments so many teams at once can get the challenge. Also i think there should be a rule implemented that each of the top 5 ranked teams has to play at least 2 games against teams ranked outside the top 5. That way the big teams will be forced to play the likes of USa, Scotland, Russia, Wales etc.

backtracking a bit, i recently discovered that setanta sports in now avilable in AUS and i check it all the time to see if there is any league. So far no dice, all i have seen is soccer like blues TV (a TV show devoted to Chealsea) and 'classic six nations', i had the patience to watch 'classic six nations' once and about half way through i thought to myself "if this is classic i would hate to see the normal games" because it could possibly be the most boring hour of my life. lol. Hopefully though setanta will take some league to USA, also hopefully they will bring us aussies some league other than NRL or SL that fox has neglected.

Yes Jim, pretty much like you have said, i think they will go down this path, maybe not with the oz a and eng a etc ,, but they will start getting the other nations envolved somehow, after this world cup they will wake up to themselves i think. I just love the group idea, like everyone has said, it will be such a good spectical, being so close and none of us have a clue who are going to win, any of the games i think, yes onion, they have there own problems, they are probably 20 years behind league as in rules,,  they will catch up, but you would have to think that league might have gained the upper hand by the time they do, i was talking last night to my samoan mate about union in n.z  and i was telling him i didn,t even know the union existed until 2003, and the queensland reds, well i thought the reds were the defunct perth reds, league side, now this is how ,,, you might say ignorant league over here was towards union, we have always followed league, thats my take on the other code, i never really had a problem with it, because i never new about it, and he was telling me that its the same over in n.z with union, its a religin over there, they have never bothered with league, some do obviuosly, and league is starting to get more coverage and support over there, its like trying to tell someone who is eating a jawbreaker, here try this jube, it wont break yourteeth, he looks at it and keeps eating his jawbreaker. Yeah, that sums it up.

let's hope there's a push in the usa after yesterday's game between leeds and souths

12,500 people turned up!

i'm not suggesting anything like that for domestic games but it shows there's interest 

Yeh lets all hope, it would be great for RL to get a strong following in USA. Would be great to see more high profile teams play there, try and generate as much interest as possible so that the AMNRL gets a stronger support base. America has about 350million people i believe, so getting less than 2000 to a game isnt great, so hopefully plenty of crowds of 2000+ this season.

How great is Russell Crowes investment in South Sydney? i mean not only has he tranformed thew club from wooden spooners to finalists but he has also help spread the gospel in USA. I hear that even a few celebrities showed up, Dennis Rodman, Layne Beachly, thats all i can remember but there was more. Plus 12500 is a good crowd in any country other than aus or england, hell im not sure you would get 12500 to the same match in sydney!!!

No, you would probably only get about 60,000 to sydney for that game, i can tell you exactly how many you would get to brisbane though, 52,500 capacity crowd limit. People do watch super league you know, and if they beat storm, then why wouldn,t they get that amount, we all would turn up for a quality match. The wcc will be telecast live or delayed i would say on channel 9 , be interesting to see the veiwers figures on that one, we are all looking forward to league here at the moment, even a beach game would probably attract a good veiwing.

oikee:

No, you would probably only get about 60,000 to sydney for that game.

 

Never Ever Ever would a game between leeds and souths get 60,000 in sydney 

Actually Marv you might, you'd get all the Poms that are sitting in Bondi and Coogee come out to see one of their teams actually have a hope in winning something! ;) Hehehe. Last I hear there were well over 60,000 of them sitting in that area and other sydney surrounds. You'd probably get the ones in Brisie and Melbourne come over for the game too.

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You had a hundred thousand just turn up to get souths back into the game, poms probably wouldn't even get a seat to the game. Have a look at the crowd figures this year to the rabbits games, you might get abit of a surprise there, crowe has transformed those bunnies, they now are big bussiness, and anyone who gets in there way, watch out, hehhe

I'm afraid i disagree with you chaps

Yeh I Still Dont Know about 60,000, i mean it is a trial game after all. Then again not often you get to see an england club play in Australia.

Hopefully Souths can play a few more games in states, with russell promoting them. Why not try and sell out a bigger stadium?