International RL Blog

I wish everybody a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Lets hope it's good one Let's hope we can avoid the repeated missed opportunities that has blighted our game over the years Thankfully, Crusaders are still with us and still have the opportunity to add to their growing band of supporters and build on the great work carried out in Wales recently.  I'm sure we'd all like to forget the the calamitous Leighton Samuals regime which was awarded a three year SL franchise and embarrassed the RFL and it's vetting procedures. We can all be wise in retropect and it's great to see us not repeating similar mistakes made with Paris St Germain (PSG) and Gateshead. Paris St Germain, who were  the mother of all missed opportunities, played in the initial SL competition all those years ago and were a great success. They were a high profile, capital city, French club who plaid in front of big crowds and were very co...

Let's face it, the Four Nations competition currently taking place in NZ/Australia have been a shambles. As always, I make my comments before the final matches but no sponsor, poor scheduling, low crowds, uncompetitive matches and very little media attention mean the ARL should hang their head in shame. I was relatively optimistic after the successful World Cup in 2008 but as that proud Aussie, Russell Crowe said on Twitter " ARL should be doing everything possible to help strengthen other nations league sides, not do everything possible to win. The big picture is the important thing for international league games, not simply for Aus to win" Absolutely right. The ARL don't seem interested in International RL and prefer to focus on the NRL and SoO which is very short sighted. For me, the most disappointing aspect so far was that yet again an important international match involving Australia was refereed by an Australian. I do not doubt ...