Top 4 vs top 4 would be pretty competitve any thing below that wouldn't IMO.

Leeds
Saints
Wire
Hudds

Vs

Manly
Melbourne
NZ
Wests

The top 4 in our competition doesn't include Wigan?

Our top few sides would get some results against their bottom few sides but likely beaten by their better teams. 7th and down in SL would get absolutely hammered every game.

No, why would it?

Because Wigan are one of the top 4 sides in our competition. If the World Club Challenge was to take place now, I'd rather have Wigan playing for Super League than Huddersfield.

They managed to win a SL Grand Final in very recent memory, just swao them for St. Helens

Don't include St Helens. We need a side capable of winning finals.

No, just don't play the final at Old Trafford....we can win finals elsewhere

Pathetic!

We were probably the only English side to come out of it with much credit. We beat Canterbury Bulldogs home and away iirc and like you say was unlucky in the quarter against Hunter Mariners.

We had a stinker of a side in 97 as well with gems like Doc Murray, Paul Koloi and Stuart Lester turning out for us.

Au contraire London Broncos also made the quarter-finals after smashing Canberra at the Stoop!

Indeed! Reasonable crowd too - ca. 10,000 IIRC.

Seems like I got mixed up on the crowd with the Broncos (x2) game: richarddelariviere.co.uk/?p=713

Seems like I got mixed up on the crowd with the Broncos (x2) game: richarddelariviere.co.uk/?p=713

[size=85Quarter-finals
Date Result Score Stadium City Crowd
3 October 1997 Auckland Warriors def. Bradford Bulls 62-14 Ericsson Stadium Auckland 9,553
3 October 1997 Hunter Mariners def. Wigan Warriors 22-18 Central Park Wigan -
4 October 1997 Brisbane Broncos def. St Helens 66-12 ANZ Stadium Brisbane 6,438
6 October 1997 Cronulla Sharks def. London Broncos 40-16 The Stoop London 6,239
[/size

I seem to recall Russell Crowe saying he'd love to hold some type of extended WCC... in Vegas! I must admit I do like the sound of that. Imagine a few thousand rugby league fans in Vegas. What a party!

London beat Canberra.

After Canberra beat London in Oz and politely said London played like "a bunch of spastics"

would like to see this competition tried again in some form or other in superleague 20 to celebrate 20 years of superleague

i was just think......saints did'nt win a game but got to the 1/4's.......

we beat NQ cowboys.......and went bust

top 4 extension would be good to watch.

if a team below 4th wins grand final then the 4th place finished team should drop out!

Depends what you class as the 'top 4'.

Given the GF winners are the champions and the GF losers are presumably seen as the runners up then the beaten semi-finalists should be seen as the remainder of that seasons top 4. Hence this seasons top 4 were Leeds, Saints, Warrington & Wigan.

If we played a competition between the top 4 of each league it would be competitive and realistic. Having more teams would increase the cost and time of the competition as well as losing some of the quality of the sides in it.

Warrington, Wigan, Saints, Leeds
vs
Melbourne, Manly, Brisbane, Wests


Would be pretty interesting.
Leeds finished 5th in the SL but get into this as they won the GF.

why not have a tournament every 3 years.. the winners of each national league qualify( i know one team might win it twice)3 aussie teams and 3 english/european team .. each team gets to play 3 times against foreign opposition and the top team from each league qualify for final

It will never work out unless there is massive money involved.
The NRL teams have no real desire to play the English teams as seen in the WCC.
The "Scalps" of Leeds, Wigan or Saint Helens mean little to NRL Clubs or their supporters.

Have to agree with you. There is neither the kudos or financial incentive for the NRL sides to get involved in this type of tournament again.

Exactly.

We may as well have a European Cup like they have in union, where the top Super League teams play the top teams from the French Elite One competition. The Super League clubs and fans might feel a bit 'meh' about playing the French teams but that's how the NRL teams and fans would feel about playing Super League teams.

I think the only thing that would make it credible would be if say England beat Australia a few times in say a 4 year period, so the Aussies started to get respect for the English and then they would be interested in playing their clubs.

The Aussie public are often disrespectful of sports teams they think are crap but they do change their respect, in cricket for instance the next Ashes is now very highly anticipated, lots of talk in the Aussie press, radio phone ins etc about how do the Aussies get it back and topple the Poms, they did give English cricket respect after winning back to back Ashes.