Mascord: Kangaroo tours return 2019/2020; Great Britain to play Ashes Series

[adamkungl]

5 tests none midweek. 3 vs England 1 vs France 1 vs one of the other UK mobs. Any midweek games if at all should be against club sides. I'd leave that tradition in the past tbh

 

[Coastbloke]

If Australia ever decides to do a end of year 3 Test tour of NZ, why can't a full strength Samoa or Fiji go and either do a 3 Test tour of England with a side trip to France or a Tri Nations with England, France and either Fiji/Samoa/Tonga/PNG.. ??

 

[latingringo101]

I think Tours and GB don't really do anything for anyone.

Breaking away from GB and replacing the Lions Tours with the 4 Nations has done more for International RL then when they were around.

Meninga has said he wants them revived, but i hope the RLIF/RFL don't listen to him a resist the temptation for them to return.

 

[Evil Homer]

I think Tours and GB don't really do anything for anyone.

Breaking away from GB and replacing the Lions Tours with the 4 Nations has done more for International RL then when they were around.

Meninga has said he wants them revived, but i hope the RLIF/RFL don't listen to him a resist the temptation for them to return.

Tours are a relic from a time when teams had to travel half way around the world by boat and then stay for a month or more and play as many matches as possible in that time to make it worth their while. That's the only reason they ever existed in that format and the fact that people constantly talk about them being brought back is weird IMO. There are so many more beneficial and interesting things we could do but the fact is that so many people in RL are insular and backwards-looking that this seems to be an inevitability. Plus the head of our international federation comes from cricket, another backwards, Anglo-centric sport where 'tours' is pretty much all they do, so he probably thinks this is a good idea.

As for GB, it's not coming back. You can just ignore Mascord completely when it comes to that, he writes this shit every month and it's not going to happen.

 

[adamkungl]

Tours are a relic from a time when teams had to travel half way around the world by boat and then stay for a month or more and play as many matches as possible in that time to make it worth their while. That's the only reason they ever existed in that format and the fact that people constantly talk about them being brought back is weird IMO. There are so many more beneficial and interesting things we could do but the fact is that so many people in RL are insular and backwards-looking that this seems to be an inevitability. Plus the head of our international federation comes from cricket, another backwards, Anglo-centric sport where 'tours' is pretty much all they do, so he probably thinks this is a good idea.

As for GB, it's not coming back. You can just ignore Mascord completely when it comes to that, he writes this shit every month and it's not going to happen.

What's the problem with Australia flying over to England for a 3 match series + 2-3 more games against other home nations and France? Or vice versa?

 

[East Coast Tiger]

They played something like 18 games in 1994, the last proper tour. Hardly ancient history. Pretty sure they didn't spend six weeks on a boat getting there. Even the 2001 tour was supposed to include games against the big four clubs until the 9-11 bullshit went on and it was cut back to the three tests. And the 2003 tour included three games outside the ashes tests.

A test series is absolutely the right idea and while they're over there it makes sense to play a couple of other games against the likes of France and Wales. And if the ARL or Meninga wants to take two sides worth of players over then it opens up the possibility of midweek games. And if there are four or five midweek games it makes sense that these are easily traveling distance from the tests and against teams that will draw crowds in that timeslot, which means northern clubs.

I don't understand the backlash against traditional ideas, especially when they're perfectly reasonable. If it was damaging in some way or likely to lose money it might be a problem and if it replaced something more important or valuable it would definitely be an issue. But I don't think that can be claimed. We don't know the details of it yet and we certainly don't know what alternatives they are considering, if any.

 

[Evil Homer]

What's the problem with Australia flying over to England for a 3 match series + 2-3 more games against other home nations and France? Or vice versa?

There's nothing wrong with it per se but it's a symptom of the lack of organization and vision in international RL. Soccer does not have 'tours' because they have a proper, standardized international calendar instead of the ad-hoc bullshit that we have. They also have more than two or three credible international nations in their sport.

If we have a structured international calendar that allow for this type of thing once every four years then that's not a bad thing, as it is we don't seem to have any type of plan for 2018-2020 and just saying that we can do 'tours' isn't good enough.

 

[East Coast Tiger]

No not isn't. But it's not the tours part of the idea that is the problem. It's the lack of a clear schedule of tours (plus tournaments, one-off games etc).

Soccer is another thing altogether. They have 200 teams and just about any one of them can play another and draw a crowd and provide a close game or even any result. We can forget about trying to be like soccer.

What we do see in RL regularly is a one-off game or even a fixture within a tournament after which a lot of people say it would make for a good three game series. Why? Because they've worked in the past, the team that loses game 1 has a chance to fight back and there's a narrative and a drama that can come from them that you don't get in one-off games. Imagine if Klemmer and Burgess had played again in the final. It would have provided a real point of interest. If the poms were half decent it would have happened. A series has that built in. Drama in game one is great for selling game two and then if there's a decider it's like a final. I didn't see last year's Kiwi series but it seemed a lot more successful than this 4N. They got a bigger crowd in London for a start. It helped that England actually won a game to start with, but it still produced three good crowds and three good games.

 

[Evil Homer]

Soccer is another thing altogether. They have 200 teams and just about any one of them can play another and draw a crowd and provide a close game or even any result. We can forget about trying to be like soccer.

We only have three credible teams because that's all we have ever presented as being credible. Scotland drew with NZ, Samoa almost beat England and NZ in 2014, if we push them as being a big deal rather than an afterthought then the interest will be there, yeah they might get flogged from time to time but so might England or NZ like we saw in the 4N. But the fact that these countries are only involved once every couple of years on a completely ad hoc basis means that of course their brands aren't going to grow. That's not helped by completely segregating them from everything so we can do 'tours' just because that's what we've always done and a bunch of 70 year old blokes still think it's a good idea. Like I said, it's not a problem as long as we have something in between, the fact that the Intercontinental Cup 'might' be happening in 7 f**king years is outrageous.

 

[adamkungl]

My idea for tours is kind of a cascading system that involves everyone. It has to be a coordinated plan, it can't just be at the whims of Australia but it does depend on the major events of the big-3 as a starting point.

Australia tours England for a 3 match series + tests against France and Scotland.
France plays their game against Australia then goes on their own tour - lets say NZ and the Pacific Islands.
NZ plays a game against Samoa and PNG before the French arrive.
After their game against France, Samoa go on a North American tour
..etc

Give them a time frame and start with a major money spinning event and put the other pieces of the puzzle around that.

It's possible to revive 'traditional' ideas but re-work them to fit in with the game's future in a way that includes everyone.

 

[East Coast Tiger]

We also can't just have tournaments that are basically identical every year except in the number of teams involved. We don't only have three strong teams because we played series in the past. We have three strong teams because they're the only countries on earth with a depth of full time players underpinned by junior,
grassroots and semi pro competitions, and that's down to domestic development, not test football.

Scotland has been playing in major tournaments like the WC since 2000 and the domestic game has done nothing and that's why it continues to have no credibility despite playing in the 4N and the WC.

And quite frankly this constant dismissal and even condemnation of anything traditional in the game is getting f**king tiresome. The sport is lucky it has its traditions or it would have very little else. To just dismiss anyone who sees value in things that have worked for many years and created and sustained much of what we do have in the game as just old people stuck in the past is just as bad as someone saying we should forget about expansion and international football. We need our traditions AND new ideas.

Test series work and can actually underpin other events and developments and offer diversity. You only have to look at how the 2001 ashes got the rfl out of a financial hole following the 2000 WC.

 

[Foreign Legion]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/n...t-britain-lions-rugby-league?CMP=share_btn_tw



eague fans envious of England beating Australia to win 14 rugby union tests in a row when their national team hasn’t beaten the Kangaroos for a decade, have something to look forward to. Great Britain are coming back. Yes, I know, you’ve heard it all before. But this time it’s true – apparently. As union’s British and Irish Lions gear up to dominate the media next summer when they head to New Zealand, a relaunch of the League Lions is being planned, at last.

It’s nine years now since Richard Lewis brought the curtain down on the Great Britain story after 60 (at times) glorious years, 10 since GB played down under and 24 since an Ashes series was held in Australia. But I am reliably informed that plans are evolving for the return of Great Britain & Ireland and the Ashes, last competed for on these shores in 2003 when Great Britain contrived to turn three late leads into three narrow defeats.

With World Cups down under next year and up here in 2021, an Ashes series in 2018 would most likely be in the UK. Alternatively, Great Britain could go back to Australia in 2020. With Australia’s players union still demanding a fallow year between World Cups, it will be one or the other, not both.

So what would a modern Ashes tour look like? The whole point of bringing it back would be to give players and fans a different experience to the Four Nations or World Cup. It would mean warm-up or midweek matches at provincial venues, and three Tests. While it would not go on any longer than the current four to five weeks, more could be packed in.

But how could Great Britain & Ireland look any different to England? Assuming they took the traditional rugby union Lions’ philosophy of having every home nation contributing, there would be management and players from all four camps, surely led by a British coach. If you were choosing it now, a Lions squad could include Scotland’s Matty Russell, Danny Brough and possibly even Adam Walker, the Welsh flavour could come from Lloyd White, Ben Flower or Rhys Evans, and from Ireland, possibly Ben Currie and the Kings brothers from Warrington. None of these players would be guaranteed a spot in a GB XIII picked on merit alone, but the Lions should be more than that.



The main reason Great Britain was mothballed in 2007 was that it had become an all-English team anyway. Other than Tony Smith’s bizarre selection of Samoan Maurie Fa’asavalu in 2007, as far as I can fathom, Irishman Brian Carney is the only Great Britain player not born in England since Welshman Rowland Phillips played in Papua New Guinea in 1996, bringing to an end a century of union converts from the celtic nations.

Nowadays the celtic contribution to Great Britain – or rather the “British Isles XIII” as the crest on my cherished old GBRL shirt declares – will most likely be English-born. But they could certainly bring the spirit and grit missing from Wayne Bennett’s England side last month.

 

[LeagueXIII]

If Australia ever decides to do a end of year 3 Test tour of NZ, why can't a full strength Samoa or Fiji go and either do a 3 Test tour of England with a side trip to France or a Tri Nations with England, France and either Fiji/Samoa/Tonga/PNG.. ??

3 test series don't work, one off occasions are the way to go, as seen in union.

 

[Tigers1986]

My proposal that would work wonders:

2017 - World Cup
2018 - Australia vs NZ series, 2 hosted in Aus, 1 in NZ (like Origin), England vs Scotland possibly??
2019 - Kangaroos Tour to England
2020 - Australia vs NZ series, 2 hosted in NZ, 1 in Aus
2021 - World Cup
2022 - Aus vs NZ
2023 - Lions Tour to Australia
2024 - Aus vs NZ
2025 - World Cup

And so on.

 

[roughyedspud]

Theres a intercontinental cup in 2023 and the aussies aren't playing in 2018..


So i dunno who its working wonders for??

 

[siv]

Dumb if true

We finally have got all of the English countries competing well

No need to send this backwards

 

[Knownothing]

Dumb if true

We finally have got all of the English countries competing well

No need to send this backwards

The "English" countries? There is only one England.

 

[Arucard]

LOL why does this shit keep coming up?

They aren't going to play any better just by changing their name and shirt..........

If we need to go with the Great Britain thing again, why can't we just use it for when they do a tour somewhere? That way they can pick some Celtic players in the touring squad to play the midweek games and try and push for selection in the main team for the tests.
Otherwise it's just going to be an English team at home called something else.

 

[Tigers1986]

Theres a intercontinental cup in 2023 and the aussies aren't playing in 2018..


So i dunno who its working wonders for??

In theory it would be the best fit. No idea what the intercontinental cup is (or I do if it's the rumoured 8 nations event). Australia could always play a 'B' side and kick ass without our stars.

 

[East Coast Tiger]

What's this? The boss of the RFL talking about the return of GB for 2019 Ashes? But we were told Mascord was wrong?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p051nm2z

It's almost as if Mascord actually knew what he was talking about and a couple of nuffies on the interweb didn't. But that can't be.