England
Australia
New Zealand
France
Wales
PNG / Samoa

I'd prefer it because it would give the 4th team a better chance and they'd have a chance at doing well. The only downside is that it would be a longer competition but that would generate more sponsor/ TV money.

We'd have to cut the regular season down as we couldn't have it in the middle of the season.

Keep it as it is. The Pacific Cup and European Cup are competitive

Agreed. The carrot of winning the European or Pacific Cup make those competitions important.

Two strong, one average and 3 very poor sides is a bad idea in ANY tournament.

Better than 1 strong, 3 or 4 average and the rest awful like the RU WC though!

Maybe not 6 but I'd be tempted to make it 5, so when it's the northern hemisphere it would be:
Australia, NZ, England
France & Wales (assuming they reach the final of the European Cup)

And when it's in the south:
Australia, NZ, England
PNG & Fiji? Isn't there a Pacific islands equivalent of the European Cup? So the finalists of that.

It'd only add 1 game to the schedule but would give the "lower" teams a chance of winning a game in the competition.

I didn't watch much of it but New Zealand, South Africa, Wales, England, France, Australia and Ireland are all capable of beating any of the others on a good day. The same can't be said for the line up mentioned above. Sides like Wales, France, PNG and Samoa will NEVER beat a side like Australia in a competitive match. The gulf is too wide and will never narrow enough

If the WC qualifiers and 4N qualifiers have shown us anything, it's that meaningful lower-tier internationals bring a lot more interest. I think the RFL/ARL/RLIF/RLEF/(whoever it is that can make a difference) should take this on board and come up with a meaningful progressive structure on the field.

Something like:

2013:
RLWC

2014:
Tri-Nations (featuring the top 3 from the WC, meaning a 3rd place play-off has meaning).
Five Nations Qualifers (NH and SH groups of 4, these being the top 4 placed teams from each hemisphere in the WC).

2015:
Five Nations (featuring 3N teams and two qualifiers).
European and Pacific Cup qualifiers (featuring whoever is left outside the 5N).

2016:
European Cup (featuring top four European teams, including England)
Pacific Cup (featuring top four Pacific teams, including Australia, New Zealand)
World Cup qualifiers.

2017:
RLWC (featuring 8 teams in EC/PC and 8 qualifiers).



Structure. Progression. Variety. And as more nations play the game, the structure doesn't need to change at the top.

I like that

I mentioned this idea a while ago, which at first sounds even nuttier than a 6 Nations, 8 Nations. Hear me out...


There is no group stage, it begins as a knockout competition, and it could go something like this:

Week 1:
Aus vs Samoa
NZ vs Wales
England vs PNG
France vs Ireland

Week 2:
Aus vs France
England vs NZ
----------
Wales vs Samoa
Ireland vs PNG...the week 1 losers are playing off for 5th spot

Week 3:
GF
3rd place playoff
5th place playoff
7th place playoff


PRO's:
- It only lasts 3 weeks...
- yet EVERY team is playing a match each week
- It can be used to give the world rankings some credibility... (hence a 5th place and 7th place playoff)...
- Only one week of 'mismatches'

CON's:
Who'd want to watch a 7th place playoff???

You killed it when you said Ireland

Just an example... Ireland, Scotland, Tonga, take your pick....

How do you sell tickets and schedule these matches if you don't know who's playing where 2 of the 3 weeks?
As soon as they've lost their first game, the rest of the fixtures will be total non-sellers. That's why we have group games. They are a fixture at a set venue that you can sell for weeks.
Non-starter for me.

England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France in a 5 nations tournament play during the season NH every year.
Aus, NZ, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, PNG in a 6 nations tournament play during the season SH every year.

Aus, NZ, GB, France and a PI side play a 5 nations once every other year.

Once every 8 years GB + France tour SH with as a proper lions tour, one playing a three match series against Aus, the other NZ, with 'midweek' games against the island sides.

Once every 8 years Aus and NZ tour the NH as a proper tour, one playing a three match series against France, the other GB, with 'midweek' games against the emerging nations in the NH.

Once every 4 years we have a world cup.

When a country is ready they can be added to the hemisphere competitions, then the 4 nations, then, naturally they would grow to a touring side.

There are 4 seeded teams, 3 of which are sure to progress through to the semi-final, so you can sell week II quite easily, knowing almost certainly which teams will be there... Then the GF, like any match is up in the air... Don't think like 4 Nations stadiums like Wembley will be used, here's an example of how it could go:

Week 1:
Aus vs Samoa @ the Stoop
NZ vs Wales @ Wrexham
England vs PNG @ Salford
France vs Ireland @ Avignon

Week 2:
Aus vs France @ Toulouse
NZ vs England @ Hull
------
Wales vs Samoa @ Wrexham
Ireland vs PNG @ Halifax

Week 3:
Grand Final @ Huddersfield
3rd place playoff @ St Helens
5th place @ Headingley
7th place @ Leigh

Cheap tickets for the 3rd, 5th, 7th placed matches... The tournament would still turn a profit...

We'd be seeing 12 matches in 3 weeks, instead of 7 in 4 weeks, as is the case in the Four Nations...

Really?

I would say the Southen Hemisphere are capable of beating each other but realistically the NH sides beat the SH sides once every blue moon. For all the talk of how well Wales did they still lost to South Africa and lost to Australia like they always do.

Isnt there some crazy stat where the NH sides have when combined beat NZ like 5 times in 100 years?

So...

What if Ireland beat France (a very big possibility)? They'd be playing Aus in Toulouse and France playing PNG in Halifax.

You've even admitted yourself that all the games aren't that sellable by picking small stadiums for them. The biggest ground is KC. The rest wouldn't even come close to selling out despite being at small stadiums. How would we afford to host 4 teams from the southern hemisphere off tiny crowds?

Be honest, what crowds do you think this competition would get and compare it to this year's 4N and you'll see why it's not a good idea.

Midweek games or stand alone weekend ones? Would you suspend the regular league games or let them play with out their internationals?

For the 5/6 Nations? stand alone weekends.

Id look within the next 5 years to extend SL to 16 teams (Toulouse + one more) split the league in to 2 divisions of 8, play everyone in your division twice home and away (14 games) and every team in the other once (8 games, 4 home, 4 away) + mm which would give a 23 game regular season, top 4 in each division play off 1st in division a v 4th division b etc giving us a 26 game season which is 5 games less than now leaving us with 5 spare weekends to play an international tournament.

Whilst we are all chucking ideas out there...

[iMid-Season[/i

Origin & ANZAC (Australia, NZ)
Exiles Match/WotR/Whatever (England)

Pacific Cup (PNG, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga [maybe Cook Islands?)
European Cup (France, Wales, Scotland, Ireland)
Atlantic Cup (USA, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa)
"European" (Shield? Bowl?) (Italy, Lebanon, Serbia, Russia)

All across 3 weeks internationally? (ie Winners of groups are winners, no finals)


[iEnd-of-Season[/i

6 Nations (Australia, NZ, England, Pacific Cup Winner, European Cup Winner, Runner up of relevant hemisphere of hosts)
Development Cup (Other runner up, 3rd PC, 4th PC, 5th PC/Cook Islands, 3rd EC, 4th EC, Winner European Shield, Winner Atlantic Cup) (Two groups of 4, leading to a final)
Remaining nations/invitational developing nations enter teams to a 9s cup?

Mid season qualifications should give enough time to sort out venues etc..



I always agree with this format for SL, although most don't.

You don't watch anything outside of English RL do you...

16th Oct: Scotland 26-6 Ireland
29th Oct: France 46 -10 Scotland...

This tournament, just going through each match and making conservative estimates, would total about 140,000 in 3 weeks. The Four Nations that is on now looks set to have an total gate of about 120,000 over 4 weeks...

140,000?!!! Would be very interested to know how you have come to this figure, especially using "conservative estimates".
Here are my estimates using your fixtures:

Week 1:
Aus vs Samoa @ the Stoop (5,000 at very best, based on past exhibition games at the Stoop, e.g. Quins vs NRL Champs)
NZ vs Wales @ Wrexham (10,000 at very best, based on capacity of the ground, which is being very generous)
England vs PNG @ Salford (12,000 at very best, based on past fixtures vs France/Wales at the end of the season)
France vs Ireland @ Avignon (14,000 at very best, based on last year's crowd for the same game)

Week 2:
Aus vs France @ Toulouse (14,000 at very best, based on 2009 Four Nations crowd there and adding a few more because it's Aus, but not taking into account slow ticket sales from not knowing if France will actually be in at this stage or not)
NZ vs England @ Hull (23,000 at very best, based on previous crowds for NZ at KC, and again not taking into account slow ticket sales from not knowing who will be in at this point).
------
Wales vs Samoa @ Wrexham (4,000 at best, a nothing game and basing it on other low-level internationals in Wales)
Ireland vs PNG @ Halifax (3,000 at best, based on the last time Ireland played a game with actual meaning in West Yorkshire at Dewsbury, and taking away people for the fact that nobody knows who will be playing and that it's a nothing game)

Week 3:
Grand Final @ Huddersfield (20k if England aren't there at best, 23k if they are, based on the fact that Galpharm rarely sells out)
3rd place playoff @ St Helens (5k at best, a nothing game)
5th place @ Headingley (5k at best, a nothing game)
7th place @ Leigh (5k at best, a nothing game).

I've got 120k there just, and being very generous with some of the crowds.
I don't know where you got your 120k figure from for the 4N as well, but considering we're already at 23k at the moment, have sold over 41k at Wembley at the moment (so another 6k not out of the question), Eng/NZ and Wal/Aus likey to post 23k and 10k crowds at best (what I predicted for your idea), that means you think there will be less than 20k for the final? There was 26k there even when England didn't make it. 130-140k for 7 games is better than 120k for 12 games.
That's 5 extra venues and 4 extra teams to put up. The number of weeks is irrelevant if you've doubled the number of teams and made only half of the teams have more than one meaningful game.

And I'm not sure what your point is posting them two results? Are you trying to say it's not a very possible situation that Ireland could beat France? Let's look at how they did in the last World Cup...
Ireland - one win off the semis.
France - ranked the worst team in the competition.

I don't think I need to justify how much RL I watch outside of England on that basis (but I'll add I've just come back from a rugby league trip to Malta just for the sake of it

)

Id go for quality rather than quantity by having a 4 Nations consisting of:

Great Britain
Australia
New Zealand
Combined Pacific islands team

Good post wellsy, really.

I think your crowd projections were good, though I think the St Helens match (since there's a high chance England will be there) and the Toulouse match would have gotten bigger attendances, and to a lesser extent, the Headingley match...

Ireland play France this weekend and there's a high chance the Irish will get rolled... So my point was, on current form, France are short odds favourites in that contest...

Well done on going to Malta, how are things over there? Shame they weren't involved in the WC qualifiers...