The GB brand was and still is very highly thought of in Australia. Pretty much all of our big wins have come under that banner. It's iconic. Famous red and blue V with the roaring lion the chest, it has history and meaning in RL. Those dismissing it i just don't get but each to their own.

I'm not dismissing it at all but, as I said in my earlier post, there just aren't any Welsh, Scottish or Irish players that would make the team ant to revert to GB, could make us look worse than we do now.
The history is great and our International success came under the Lions name but, changing back to it wont make a scrap of difference to the players ability and wouldn't change results.
IF and its a huge if, the other home nations were individually strong and GB was a greater force than England then, it would make sense to change back but, to do it now would just be tokenism.

That kind of attitude has often been prevalent in Rugby League.

It is a sport which has rarely made a fuss about its history and it's often a huge research project in itself to discover anything about the game beyond even the last decade!

Other sports celebrate their history.

RL is very dismissive of it in this country, and particularly so during the SL-era.

Anything prior to SL is dismissed as backward, played in winter, by fat players, on muddy pitches, with Hovis bread adverts prevalent and not worthy.

Where proper tours, Ashes series, domestic cup competitions are considered foolhardy.

Instead, get ready for a brave new modern world of mid-season summer internationals involving England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and France. And that's assuming the RFL ever get around to organising it in time. There is a Magic Weekend to take care of first after all.

The only hope for the future of international RL is.....
1) Switch back to winter season in the UK.
2) Switch back to GB (for top-tier tests V Aus/NZ) and home nations V France, PNG, Samoa. Tonga, Fiji, etc.
3) World Cups involve home nations.
3) Proper mid-season tours (Lions, Kangaroos Kiwis) and Ashes Series back on schedule (which requires 1 above).

Otherwise, it's screwed and on its backside... as it has been for the past two decades.

I honestly don't think the Aussies care whether we play as Great Britain or as England. What they want is competitive matches in front of packed out stadiums. They won't think highly of GB or England if they are beating us easily every time we play them.

You talk about the history of the game and that it is on it's backside but, where the hell was the game just before the switch to the summer era.
If you want a definition of "on it's backside", have a look back and remind us just how healthy the game was before Uncle Maurice brokered the SL deal.
The game was as close to dying as it has ever been.

I'm not for one minute saying everything is great, it clearly isnt but, it's in better shape than the mid - late '90's

It's not all about results.

It's about not crapping all over a successful brand with historical significance.

It's about nurturing something you have which actually worked very well!

Would any other sport shoot itself in the foot like RL has done?

The whole country knew of Ellery Hanley, Shaun Edwards, Garry Schofield, Jason Robinson and Co when they played Ashes Series under the GB banner. As mentioned above by Biff Tannen, the GB brand was iconic... it meant something... hardly any other sport played as GB apart from the Olympics and their Team GB branding.

Hardly anyone outside of parts of the M62 stretch has heard of Luke Gale, Ryan Hall and James Graham, and they have even less interest in the England RL branding because there are plenty of other much bigger sports with bigger media profiles to lend support to the England branding instead.

Replacing GB with England?



It's tantamount to New Zealand in RU ditching the All Blacks branding and claiming it isn't modern or progressive enough.

We're discussing international RL which was doing rather well and had a far higher profile pre-1996 than it does today.

International RL is most definitely not in better shape since the switch to summer rugby in the UK.

this.. the game was in a financial mess here, commercial value very low also.

but hey, we had GB tours so lets forget about all the wrongs of pre-super league era.

Enjoy your Magic Weekends.

And your Eddie Stobart/First Utility type commercial deals.

The thing is, you're talking about a different era. That was (mainly) pre-Sky TV and before the airwaves were swamped with Premier League football and all sorts of other sports. It's much harder now for RL to gain any attention.

Back in the 1980's when I was growing up, there was very little live sport on TV. I remember every Saturday watching Football Focus with Bob Wilson and then checking out the Grandstand schedule for the rest of the day. It was mostly horse racing and odds and sods of other sports like badminton or motor cycling. It was a real treat when the Five Nations rugby union was on or Great Britain were playing Australia in rugby league.

The world has changed. There's a Premier League match (Chelsea v Everton) on today at the same time as England are playing Scotland. That's what you're competing against now. You don't have a captive audience on the BBC like you had back in the 1980's/early 90's. That's why the product on offer has to be high quality or it will go under the radar.

This is just balls. The whole nation didn't know of Schofield etc.
They knew the Wigan players. Not because of internationals or GB. But because of the Challenge Cup and because the only broadcast media available was BBC radio and 3/4 TV Channels.

That doesn't work in an age of massively centralised national media and age of hundreds of TV channels and the internet.

You are pretending to a significance and national importance that simply didn't exist.
Just because people happened to know Martin Offiah's name does not equate to what you are suggesting.

The same goes for your ludicrous suggestion that the only reason we don't have Aussie tours is because we don't play in the winter. That's just battedry of the highest order.

Leeds just last year played a game in winter against the Kiwis. Totally disproving your agenda-driven drivel.

The Aussies couldn't care less whether we played winter or summer seasons. It's about them wanting a full off-season for as many NRL players as possible. And they certainly won't release their players mid-season.

The GB name and team should be used but so should England and the separate nations. To not do so massively limits the ability of the other nations to build their own brand and identity.
Of course there was a recent proposal for a GB tour down under. Sadly it wasn't accepted by the Aussies.

But hey, I guess it's easier to make up sh|te and repeatedly state it in the hope someone eventually believes you. I believe a particularly strange, orange man in America is using the same way of debating currently.

Rugby League in the country was still very much an M62 Sport so this idea that the whole country knew the above is laughable. None of them were sport super stars over here.



playing in a GB jersey wouldnt make a blind bit of difference. sorry but you are delusional. This idea that going back to GB is gonna raise rugby league to super heights is pure fantasy. If the sponsors, fans, TV networks etc etc on both sides of the world were crying out for this it would happen. Guess what, they are not. You are screaming out for something which very little people actually care about.

Oh and another thing, the NRL have no interest in bringing back the tours. The players would say no in an instance, its hard enough getting the players agreeing to playing the limited internationals we play now. Here you are thinking we can roll back to 1980 and start scheduling GB tours. Its never gonna happen. Stop listening to gary schofield as he speaks some rubbish!



could you actually be more over dramatic.

But the two things are inexorably linked aren't they ?

If the game was dead at club level, the game at National or International level wouldn't exist at all.
As for players being unknown nowadays, pre-sky, the only platform for watching RL was terrestrial TV, which everyone had access to and therefore anyone who had a vague interest in the game could see those players on TV.

You say that international RL was doing rather well and I have to agree with you, that the exposure that the tour's, culminating in a test series, was without doubt good for the game, nobody can argue that fact but as with life, everything is a balance and tour or no tour, I just cant see that moving back to winter would actually benefit RL.
I certainly dont miss being frozen and wet during the winter months and reverting to winter would pitch us directly against football and I dont think that RL can ever win that battle.
Summer of course, is holiday season and families like to do stuff at the weekends but going back to winter could possibly spell the end for RL.

Just look at the teams Great Britain played on Tour.

Look at the teams Australia and New Zealand played when touring.

Were the standards the same back then?
Would the NRL clubs really want to play Reat Britain for "fun"?

RL in this country had and still has a problem in selling its product and for an innovative sport at times is backwards in other key areas.

Just remember the game sold its soul to an innovative broadcaster but simply hadn't a clue how to sell itself outside of of that or use the opportunity to its best advantage. Boots'n All anyone? How helpful,were/ are the clubs to the media?

I didn't expect it'd be very long before the [i'Historical Revisionist of York'[/i turned up.

His revisionism is usually as follows...

(1) [uNo more proper tours (Lions/Kangaroos/Ashes etc) - It's all Australia's fault![/u

Proper tours used to take place because they could be scheduled to fit. GB Lions toured Australia June/July during Aussie mid-season and our off-season. Kangaroos toured UK during Oct/Nov during our mid-season and their off-season. See how it worked? Yep. It ain't rocket science.

Then Super League turned up in the UK and we switched to a summer season. The window of opportunity for proper tours was removed, hence why the game is now reduced to a few afterthought internationals at the end of the season instead of mid-season when they should be, and when they gain most media attention.

But, it's still all Australia's fault that there are no longer any proper tours here and down under and Ashes series according to the [iHistorical Revisionist of York[/i.

(2) [uWe switched from GB to England but now we want to switch back to GB and can't - It's all Australia's fault![/u

RFL in their wisdom (LOL) scrap the GB brand in 2007 claiming they wish to nurture home nations development instead and grow the international game that way. What a bleedin' calamity that decision has been, eh? Oh, but they had to do that in order to tap into the Brand England Market and access money from Sport England when in fact the latter is not true and was confirmed as false by former RFL CEO Richard Lewis.

But the RFL realised they made a huge cock-up in 2012 and proposed to bring back GB requesting that Australia accept at short notice a GB tour of Australia in erm... 2012... when Australia had already planned their break prior to the RLWC2013. Oh BOO HOO! SOB! Aussies won't accept our request. We'll play Wales and France at home instead then in a Tri Nations. We'll even make sure one of ours wins the Golden Boot off the back of it! Sod the Scots and Irish as they are just pub teams. So much for that Home Nations development and building an identity idea, eh? Oh, and it's Australia's fault that GB is currently dead in the water too. Australia are to blame for everything.

(3) [uBut Leeds played the Kiwis in October 2015 and that's in Winter! So we do play in winter but I've no idea what point I'm trying to make here because I've completely lost the plot... again... and erm... oh, crap... time for an ad hominem retort... so, here goes.... you remind me of Donald Trump.[/u

Wowee.

Are you saying the Aussies won't tour over here because it's in our off-season? Seriously?

Try answering the questions.

What difference does it make to Australia when our season is played? Why does it stop them from touring?

So you accept the Aussies turned down the opportunity of hosting a GB tour?

It would take a bizarre mind to suggest then it's GB that don't want to tour.

Somehow the Kiwis managed to come over and play a game and 3-match series.

What's stopping the Aussies from doing that plus a couple of other games. Are you seriously suggesting British clubs are turning down requests from Australia?

Can you respond to the other points people have made? Or will you just make more stuff up?

I'd go back to GB but only for end of season tournaments or test series against Aus/NZ. But keep the home nations for World Cups, mid-season internationals and potentially 5 nations tournaments or for tests against the likes of Samoa/Tonga/PNG.

Doing that means that we can maximise the number of players playing rep rugby, and hopefully one day build a meaningful international calendar we all crave. The fact the home nations are filled with 'grand-parent' qualifiers isn't ideal, but it's better than nothing and still serves a purpose.

The GB brand was very strong - most none rugby league sports fans knew about the GB rugby league team and showed a passing interest - with the right marketing, we could take advantage of that.

Imagine having a 4 year international calendar with main events of a World Cup, tri/four nations tournaments that involve GB and GB test series' against Aus/NZ, then bolstered by mid season home nations tests, mid season Pacific isles tests, and end of season home nations vs Pacific isles.... That's where we should be heading as a sport. If we could sustain that level of international competition I truly believe the sport could flourish. That's the best way to expand as a sport - other sporting nations such would then see a reason to buy in to rugby league.

Id stick with England, they have started to build a brand, the lack of crowds is more down the RFL's poor marketing, changing back to GB wouldent alter that. They need to start scheduling more games and getting tickets on sale a year in advance, as people would then buy them for Xmas and Birthday presents and also coach tours are more likely to arrange something with more notice.

England need to play more games, we need a 5/6 Nation European tournament mid season, if England only picked Super League players for that it would level the scores up, and you could also make them play all their games away to try and get the smaller nations to compete.

If the GB brand was so iconic and so great still then why did you have to go back to the late 80's/early 90's to name some alledged household names? GB was still going until 2007, don't recall Gareth Raynor becoming a household name for scoring a winning try vs Australia or the likes of Lee Gilmour, Paul Wellens and Sean Long?

Good point.. it's looking back with rose tinted glasses

Who knew about those fixtures outside of the M62?

Therefore who knew of the players?

They weren't participants in a proper Kangaroo or Lions Tour were they?

Super League summer rugby ensured the demise of those proper tours.

And the game you allude to above was broadcast on Sky in front of less than 100k viewers on a Saturday morning, UK time.

Enjoy your Super League.

I'm sure you believe it was all worth it for the greater good.

Meanwhile, in front of a two-thirds empty stadium in Coventry.....

Surely the whole country knew didn't they as the GB name, team and shirt was so iconic apparently.



Bless your duluded mind for thinking how the sport ran in the 80's should still be the way to do it today. The club scene was a mess early 90's so they wouldn't even be the clubs for Australia to play on a "proper tour" or even produce the players for GB. Maybe we should go back to VHS and get rid of mobiles and just have telephones also as they went well in the 80's.

You say other sports don't ignore their history like RL does......also what they don't do is adopt a "we'll lets just do what we did in the past" approach and always trying to move forward. The big difference is the RL fan base has way too many stuck in the past "sport/music/movies were better in my day types who think things should never evolve.

You forgot the muddy pitches, Hovis bread theme tune, Up and Under, Eddie Waring, pot-bellied forwards, winter, Brrrrr, scarves, icicles, snow drifts, bovril, Yooorrrrkshire Cup, cigs and beer sponsorship, black and white telly, this sporting life, Frank Machin...

Enjoy your Coventry spectacle.

Cheers I will watch something actually happening in the present unlike yourself spending your time mourning and yearning for something from a long time ago like some love struck loser still pining for the girl that dumped him many years ago to return.

You let yourself down every time with the ad hominem.

Can't help yourself, can you?

Here's a tip.

When you lose the argument, retire gracefully.