WCC as a one-off tournament (even once a year) wouldn't get the extra media profile such an otherwise great idea is capable of. It needs to be like the Champions League in soccer, or the Heineken Cup with games throughout the season, to keep up season-long interest - it's all about building profile in a continuous way - as people start writing about this big international club games, suddenly they take an interest in the participants and start writing about domestic games around the same time. As I've said a lot, travel isn't as big a deal as people make out, because in groups of 4 (say), you have 6 fixtures, but only 2 of those are overseas - you can play your two overseas away games in one trip. It also helps solve one of the challenges of the domestic season - that is how to make the regular season more important. Qualification and favourable draws are the rewards for high finishes.

A one-off tournament isn't a terrible idea, but it wastes an opportunity. Say you have a big WCC game coming up - let's say Melbourne are over for both their two away games at say Wire and Saints. Both Wire and Saints would not only have the WCC games themselves but they'd have bigger gates for the preceding domestic games (and if they won or came close, the subsequent games). Also, media would start to take an interest in both those clubs in the weeks before the 'big' WCC games. Even with just 4 teams per group, we'd have 4 NRL clubs coming over at different times during the season, each playing 2 big games against domestic clubs. Spread nicely through the earlier part of the season it would greatly boost media interest.

Likewise, your club would have a scheduled trip to Aus, with two games to play - something that lucky fans might put on their once-in-a-lifetime agenda, especially if the clubs offered 'fly and stay with team' travel packages.

Have you ever watched rugby union?

Rugby league and rugby union are different sports. A good rugby team will not demolish a bad rugby team in anything like the same way a good rugby league team will punish a bad one. Because of the nature of the codes the scoreboard is incomparable. So to give a criteria for a competitive rugby league team, and then give us a bunch of union teams who fit it, it's not fair.

Teams such as Samoa and France in rugby league are, in my opinion this is, better than Italy and Scotland in rugby union. That Samoa and Tonga are beaten convincingly in rugby league doesn't make the gulf in class bigger, it makes the games different.

Because rugby union is a negative game, particularly on the international stage - and because penalty kicks are worth 3 points - what you see is very bad teams staying in games, or being "competitive" by the measure you've given, because they're able to score 1 try and kick a few points. Sometimes all they need is a few points. This is exasperated by the fact that even good teams play conservative and kick penalties, rather than putting their opposition to the sword.

I actually did some stats on where points come from in the respective codes once when i got in an argument with a rugby fan. What I discovered was that penalty kicks account for, this is my memory at work here, just over 60% of points in international games.

For that reason, judging competitiveness by score margins doesn't really work, at least not if you're going to compare to rugby. Rugby league does need more competition in internationally, but don't invoke rugby and 3rd tier teams like Scotland

It's a shame we don;t have the money in the RLIF to fund proper torus for France, PNG, Fiji etc. All well and good the big three creaming the profits and playing each other every year but the 2nd tier nations need it more and need more opportunities to play against each other.

World Nines (every year)
Ashes Series (every two years)
World Cup (every 4 years)
5 Nations (every two years)

that would be a reasonable start to rekindle interest (if GB could actually win something of course!)

This is all true. It's why creating tight competitions is especially hard in our sport - differences in ability are dramatically amplified. Just about the only thing that's ever been a 'leveller' in the modern(ish) era is mud, but we haven't had mudbaths for 20 years, and I don't suppose anyone wants them back! It being so hard is one of the main reasons I've always thought trying to contrive an expanded international game with made-up teams is doomed.

The problem being, the World nines ans 5 nations would be met with too much apathy.
We probably do need to persist in including PNG/Fiji (in Auastralia) and France/Wales in England.
However, staging 4 nations every 2 years and alternating with some kind of expanded WCC, may be a good way foward ?