I agree with your points about the backline. For starters I don't know why they dumped Renaud Guige. I think that this imported backline idea was the brainchild of David Waite. Somebody should raise your questions with him personally. He lives in Australia now.
The top four or five French Elite sides are at the level of National league 1 in Britain, though if Toulouse or Pia ever became full time, I am sure that they could compete with the likes of Wakefield and Hull KR (one of whom will be NL1 in 2008 anyway).
Past perfomances in the Challenge Cup have shown that one or two French Elite sides could beat a National League side. In 2005 Toulouse under their then coach Justin Morgan had a glorious run to the semi finals, beating National League One teams like Doncaster, and then sensationally beating Super League stragglers Widnes (coached by Frank Endicott) in Toulouse, in 36C heat, on BBC live. In the semi final Toulouse scored three tries against Leeds and held them to a four point lead at half time, before folding in the second half, as their lack of full time conditioning showed.
The middle rank of the French Elite are equal to top of National League 2.
The two bottom strugglers (Lyon and Carpentras) are now probably National League 3 (amateur) standard.
French rugby league needs more players. It now has only 7,500. It has to get up to between 12,000 and 15,000 to be competitive. Rugby league has to tap the pool of young kids who now play rugby union. With the advent of Les Catalans SUper League club I think that this is starting to happen, as anecdotal evidence from people I have spoken to who coach over there indicates. It will happen much more once Toulouse joins Super League, because that will more than double the profile of rugby league in France. Toulouse is a brand name in French sport. Toulouse and Les Catalans will have to battle on with six to eight NRL imports each for the first few years, but their success will make them much more attractive to French school kids, and eventually they can reduce their NRL imports to about four.
But it will not be just tapping the rugby union youth base. They need to go further afield, and recruit more among the immigrant youth, those tough boys who are not soccer oriented. Rugby league must have some appeal to them. Look at Jamal Fakir and Adel Fellous. They should be role models for recruitment. The Khettabi brothers at Les Ctalans/UTC are potential stars in the making. If you look at the names of players for clubs like Carpentras, many of them have Arabic names. There are tens of thousands of such boys, in the suburbs of Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Toulouse, waiting to be discovered.
Of course the other problems French rugby league faces are lack of qualified coaches, lack of competent referees, and lack of professional management. At least Toulouse has a capable manager in Carlos Zalduendo. But he will struggle to get another coach of the quality of Justin Morgan.
Lyon, Carpentras and Marseille will never become anything until they can each find a competent manager, who can raise private sponsorship money to buy a half dozen foreign players for each club, a competent coach, and begin serious and widespread local youth development programs.
The only French site which has an English translation is Les Catalans.
http://www.catalansdragons.com/
But that will not help you find out what is happening in the French domestic competition. The new French Federation site, which is promised for the New Year, is supposed to have an English translation. We will see if it happens. But if they are only offering a computer translation, then you will struggle to follow what they are writing. Learning French is the most useful tool.
