As I said, most of the England team have got it in the neck including Burgess, what Juan Cornetto was claiming was it's because the pundits are 'anti-league', unless you are saying that ex-RL players are above criticism then SB will face get criticism as others have done. Both Gordon D'arcy and Brian O'driscoll have said SB is not ready, do you think both of them are anti-league even though they both hail from Ireland? RL just isn't that important enough (especially in Ireland) for them to have a grudge against it. GD explains that it took him 3 years before he understood all the nuances of playing in the centres at test-match level, which explains why he thinks Burgess isn't upto speed yet. Bearing in mind between them D'arcy and O'driscoll have 224 international test caps for Ireland and The Lions playing in the centres, and have won 6 European Cups between them, I (and anybody else who watches RU) would take their opinions about SB playing in the centres over yours and Juan Cornettos any day of the week.

if the nothern tests are not near enough sell outs then I see that as a very poor effort by the fans in the heartlands!

Meanwhile, 1,300 at Wales-Scotland in Wrexham.

That's the reality of international RL outside the big three and where the major challenge lies for the RLIF.

May as well go back to GB if we are going to exclude rest of the home nations.

I think that might depend on terms of Sport England funding.

Agreed. There was a time when the European cup was getting 5 figure attendances but that isn't happening when they wont even put it on regularly. They are not having another one after this until 2018 'because of other tournaments in the between times'.

My idea for the European cup would be to put it on every 2 years in the years between the four nations and have the euros at the start of the year to ensure it doesn't clash with the world cup. Unionball don't postpone tournaments when they have more than 4 games scheduled a year and neither do football for that matter.