The criterion of being competitive should be being able to get within 20 points of a major nation 80% of the time.

Rugby Union has 10 competitive nations:

England
Ireland
Wales
Scotland
France
Italy
Australia
New Zealand
South Africa
Argentina

On the fringes of competitiveness are Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and Japan.

It is inconceivable that rugby league could achieve that number of competitive nations witin the next 10-20 years.

Right now rugby league has 3 competitive nations:

Australia
New Zealand
England

On the fringes of competitiveness are France, Papua-New Guinea, and Wales.

They could be improved to competitiveness within the next 10 years, if development is continued.

Would 6 competitive nations be enough to make international competition be taken seriously by the media , public and sponsors?

I doubt it. More likely 8 is the minimum number.

Who could be the best next development areas? IMO one should be a European nation (Italy? Spain?) and another a South Pacific nation (Fiji?)

But we must work hard to get to 6 within 10 years if we are to be able to progress further. And that involves more professional teams from each currently fringe nation. Both the NRL and SL must work to realise more professional clubs from each fringe nation.

I do not think England in the last 5 years would qualify for you criteria of getting within 20 points of a major nation 80% of the time against Australia.
I do not think France, Wales or PNG will be any more competitive in 10 years time than they are now.
The first priority should be to get England to be able to compete and win against Australia on a regular basis, the fact that has not happened in four decades is more important than a pipe dream about Wales or PNG.

Depends who you're asking. The Australians don't appear to 'need' any competitive nations for their sport to thrive domestically.

We're in a different position of course, where our international profile, or lack thereof, hinders media interest.

I think we need to be realistic, but also open-minded as to the best way to proceed. I would love to see us develop meaningful and extensive international club competition as a first step to ultimately improving nation vs nation competitions ( that is: improved standards, increased desire to see nation vs nation, and increased media interest in the background due to the coverage already of big club games). Don't get me wrong, that's not easy either, and won't happen if the NRL don't like it, but to me, it feels a lot more natural to seek media profile by getting our big clubs to play their big clubs, than by trying to pretend Scotland is a genuine international-level rugby league team. Big international club games can also attract neutrals ( and media commentary ) from inside and outside the heartlands, even if just as viewers. I'd want to watch any game where one of our top four or five were playing their's. And, with the exception of Saints ( obviously ) I'd become a fan of the UK club for the night.

I don't know how good the top PNG (and other fringe nations) sides are, but if we can bring them into a "Champions League" too, then great. Provided they're not going to get smashed by 100 points or more, the odd 'development' team is fine. In fact, if we're going to be open-minded, let those countries submit a national team to the "Champions League" for the development years.

I'm sick of hearing the "travel" objection. Its no big deal - if you've two overseas teams in a group of four, you play both your overseas away games in one 10 day trip. Sorted.

And when was the last time Scotland, Italy or Argentina beat one of the big southern hemisphere RU sides?

Last 5 games v Aus have been...

8-30
20-36
14-34
16-46
16-26

Think we're slowly getting there, as for other nations France would benefit from another SL club, but that would take a hell of a lot of time and investment.
PNG need an NRL team and I think they would really come on if they got that. The problem with that again is money, and logistics.
The 'big 3' cause problems by stealing prospects from other nations because of the one issue in the eligibility laws, they take players from the minnows that don't really improve what they have got and leave the minnows with a player of inferior ability.
Look at Michael McIlorum, improves Ireland a hell of a lot, not good enough for England, easily replaced by 3 or 4 others. There's a huge list of very similar players that don't improve any of the big 3 but would dramatically improve the smaller nations.

I think we have 3 competitive nations, but the others arn't as far behind as we all think. At a big tournament where every player wants to play, you need 20ish NRL or SL players, topped up with the best semi-pros. This is roughly how many eligible 1st team regulars each had at my last count for IRL:

Cook Islands: 13
Fiji: 8
France: 20
Ireland: 17
PNG: 7
Samoa: 24
Scotland: 15
Tonga: 15
USA: 4
Wales: 12

Add these nations best players that could represent them and we've got a cracking tournament.

PNG could be major with a little investment. It is money not people that is holding them back.
Samoa possibly the same but would need to stop the flow of players playing for Australia and New Zealand

From a RU point of view I would say they have 6 major teams and Ireland are only just in that group.
England
Ireland
France
Australia
New Zealand
South Africa

Outside that group are a lot who can make a game of it sometimes but in reality are not going to trouble the big teams in the world cup. Yes I know Wales caused a stir but it isn't regular and they certainly wouldn't now.

Rugby League has 3 with in my opinion PNG and Samoa capable of causing a stir.
We are not as big but that's just the way it is. Money will change it but we haven't got enough.

Cracking post pop tart.

To answer the op, as many as possible, although in the northern hemisphere there is only England, plus France (who are some way behind)
Then we have Aussie and NZ, plus the prospect of making anouther couple of teame in PNG and maybe Fiji, however, these additional teams will be packed with players that most of us consider Aussies or NZ players.
Whilst it may not be a popular view amongst the games traditionalists, the only way that the game will prosper in the long term, is to develop the international game and an additional French domestic team would be the logical next step.
After that it becomes uncomfortable for fans at the lower end of SL as there would need to be some sacrifice of heartland clubs to make way for say a couple of Welsh teams, plus expansion into Ireland/ Scotland.
It's one hell of a conundrum and making France stronger (and any other expansion areas in the northern hemisphere) would weaken the English game in the short term.
This would be the only realistic way of increasing the games profile and it would take a fair amount of determination plus investment, and i'm not sure that either of these is present at the moment.

Wales not causing a stir? They are the current 6nation holders and did it with a Grand Slam. I agree they are in a bit of a dip at the moment

Even Italy came into international RU with far more domestic interest and playing clubs than, say, Scotland or Ireland in RL ( Google it)

I don't think anybody has a fundamental problem with the likes of Scotland having a national team per-se; I'd be delighted to see them play an important part of the international game - it's just that, for me, I can't see where the current set up leads to real international growth.

People say "well you've got to start somewhere" - which is superficially true, but can anyone [ireally[/i visualize how Scotland goes from here to being a decent international force...[istrongly supported by the Scottish people[/i?

We all want a big international game - the argument is about how to get there. Personally ( and probably wrongly, I don't know ) I feel we can do more at international club level (and do it more easily, utilizing the existing fan base) and we should focus more effort on that. Is this pessimistic? I don't think so - let's not worry about what you're 'supposed' to look like as a sport ( or worse still, try to ape RU ) - but just look at what we have - great passionate club support ( and in this area I think we're much stronger than RU, at least in England) and build competitions around what people passionately want to see. I'd queue overnight for tickets to watch my club play the top NRL sides, but not to watch England play Scotland, nor France for that matter. It's not true that the media is only interested in big games between nations themselves. The Champions League proves that.

Eventually, the more attractive and exciting our domestic and international club competitions look, the more people in Scotland (say) might want a piece of the action - one day leading to an SL team north of the border and eventually a meaningful Scotland side. Paradoxically almost, I think the game looks too far ahead for growth, instead of trying to maximize everything we can possibly get from the game as-is - which in turn, I believe creates the wider growth that you wanted all along.

A thriving international game is a pipe dream and the attempts to stage internationals hinders RL more than it helps. The shambolic games staged over the closed season made the game look amateurish at best.

Creating Welsh sides and Scottish sides will do little for the club games and at best it will be a generation or more before any real head roads can be made.

The only way forward for RL is to make its club competitions better and maybe even expand the WCC to more clubs and try and create a 'champions league' type competition that the NRL clubs are bothered about.

The change in SOO eligibility is really going to help the PI sides from now on.

Unfortunately RL has no where to hide, you can't stay close with penalty kick after penalty kick like that other code. Hard to see anyone getting close in next decade. Png, France and Fiji are best hopes but without significant investment and clubs in SL/NRL then not much hope.

Ps a competitive ashes series with GB winning would be enough!

This.

It all down to how you define "competitive". Do you mean they could win the world cup or do you mean that they can play against an elite side and not get humiliated. Either way we are behind Union regardless of how you view it.

The main problem as usual is self-interest. The NRL could easily help have more competitive sides by allowing NRL clubs in PNG and Fiji for example. But they are very self-interested and have no interest in helping the international game.

The RFL do have better intentions but incompetent management has seen a number of teams fail in Wales that should have succeeded and as a result there are concerns about letting Toulouse in the league which hampers French improvement.

So to answer the initial question we need more than 2 "elite" clubs, 4 would do and 12 "competitive" clubs so we can have a sensible world cup.

I think calling it a pipe dream is a bit unfair. But it is hard to deny that there have been a lot of short cuts taken and little investment into the grass roots of developing nations for anything to improve.

I am a fan of an extended WCC, but as I said in my previous post Aussie self-interest will prevent this from happening. Maybe it could be introduced as an alternative to an international tournament. Having a world cup every 4 years leaves you with 3 tri-series tournaments between each World Cup, maybe a WCC in the 4 year cycle (maybe the year after the World Cup) would break things up.

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 ?