Some might find this tedious but I'm genuinely interested to know whether there is an appetite out there for a return to GB. Or should we stick with what we've now got now and plough on?

Yes for the Four Nations. However there then needs to be a clear international set up for England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales in a regular basis. So players can represent their nation and if good enough be picked for GB. We might then get some commitment to the various home nations and build strength across the board.

Def bring back GB,used to love seeing the union jack flag getting vigorously waved by many people in the stands,it was something unique,compared to soccer and union.

The tennis guy,who's name escapes me,brought the England concept into RL,could see why he wanted to do that on the back of the other codes,but like I say GBRL was imo unique.

All we need now is for France RL to get up to speed and we could have a true 4N - AUS,NZ,GB,FRANCE.

Both.

England for the 4 Nations & WC, GB as a touring side.

There's a GB Tour in the pipeline for 2019 apparently.

Is there any point when very few players actually hail from/would choose to represent wales/scotland/ireland and there is no professional domestic action in those countries anyway.

The way I see it Ireland will always be there as the country people can qualify for after failing to be called up to GB/Aus.

We had such a strong brand with GB people i speak to who know barely anything about league always seem to mention GB. I know RL chops and changes so much but theres a reason for this...the rfl experiment and it doesn't work.

Too late.

The damage was done in 2007.

The cancer is now terminal.

Watch out for morons blaming the Aussies though.

Bring them back for tours and have one every free year, not four nations or world cup years so next would be 2019 then 2023 and so on.

No. Rugby Union has The Lions because that team is genuinely made up of players from all 4 countries. Great Britain in RL would be the exact same squad that England pick.

I would say play as GB for three years and have just a Tri-Nations (unless France or some other country proves that they can be genuinely competitive) with Australia and NZ (playing each twice, as someone already suggested). Then split into England etc. for the World Cup, just because there is a need to have more teams.

I'm not a big RL fan in the sense that I don't have a club team or watch loads of SL etc., but I like watching competitive international matches between the top three teams. I'm not interested in one sided matches involving deliberately weakened teams or with teams made up of players that qualify on the grandparent rule etc. I'm informed enough about RL to know that Scotland v Australia isn't a contest. It's like watching Brazil v San Marino at football.

What I would watch however is an English Origin type event - Yorkshire v Lancashire or East v West or whatever. If they made that into a proper three match series like the Ql v NSW origin series, I'd definitely make an effort to watch it. Obviously my interest would depend upon it being taken seriously though. I'm not going to bother if it's played in half empty stadiums and RL fans themselves show no interest in the game.

Can see your point as there are not the volume of players seeking money coming out of Wales and the like anymore.

We are a north of England sport,of which we should be hugely proud,yet if any player from another part of these isles wants to make it in our code then we should indeed say okay just because of you we are proud to be Great Britain.

Where as Scotland, Wales and Ireland are made up of genuine Scot's, Welsh and Irish - give me strength. For example Danny McBrough



We were always Great Britain and have been the Lions pretty much as long as the Union mob - added to that there were more genuine Welsh players in the old GB teams than there ever have or ever will be in this sham Wales team.

In a way it's not that you are totally wrong it's the fact that you support the current set up which is very very wrong.

We use to play in the winter, defences went back only 5m, tries were worth 3 pts etc. Times change and it's a feeble reason to give it the "well that's how we were in the past so should have it like that now"

We had an iconic brand and jersey with GB and we just threw it away and now have a soulless England brand and jersey. The only thing for me I don't like since super league, is the lack of proper kangaroo tours and Gb test series. Even the Aussies are no seeing tours as a way forward for international RL 4 nations just seems like a union copy cat. 3 tests and maybe 2 warm up games and a couple of mid week games would be ideal, they obviously want be able to do 12-15 game tours anymore.

Let's go back to the Tri Nations until France can sort it out,I mean how long have Catalans been in SL now,yet no worries for France RL it's just about Perpignan bar owners raking in huge amounts of cash on the back of English fans.

GB Lions was always about proper tours and Ashes series. They are no longer possible because the domestic game is reduced to being a performing butt-plug for Sky Sports desperately weak summer schedules during the soccer off-season in June and July.

I'd rather GB not be brought back at all if it is to be reduced to an afterthought entrant in some afterthought, end-of-season bollox played in places like East Hull, Workington and Coventry.

No the England RL brand is growing (sell out crowd at huddersfield) it makes no sense to change it.

Gee whiz, 24,000. I mean it's not like the NRL get more than that on a weekly basis.

And despite all the misty eyed nostalgia by some, Great Britain matches were getting the same sort of crowds in their final several years, because reality is it's the same bleeding lineup for both Eng & GB.

Maybe if we went with Eng/Wal/Sco/Ire instead a few decades earlier we'd be seeing those latter three be much more than what they are currently and we could have a larger, better international calendar instead of just playing the same two teams on repeat and expecting the game to grow.

Yeah that was the case. GB was a great brand though and needs to be brought back in some form.It and could be used in the way the Union British Lions format is on a four year rota where we tour Australia for 3 tests as GB then NZ four years later. Its obviously never going to be a full on tour again but a couple of warm up games followed by the tests should work fine. Rest of the time we stick with the separate nations of England/Ire/Wal/Sco

It should be England for World Cups and Four Nations and there should be a Great Britain test series every two years in between those tournaments.

I thought it was something to do with, they changed to England to get funding from Sport England, but then that stopped anyway?

Or get rid of the WCC and have a GB three test match series alternating between Auz and NZ at the start of the season.

My first ever Rugby League game was at Ewood Park, GB V NZ.

I remember my Mother saying to my Father 'why the hell are you going to watch that'. He said when else am I ever going to see my country play in our football stadium.

16.6k people turned up to watch.

Watching Andy Farrell play, when I had no idea who he, or anyone was, was brilliant. People around me adored the guy.

It was excellent, that was 14 years ago.

It seems that many on here have forgotten that towards the end of Great Britain era, many, many fans were questioning why the team was called Great Britain as the only non "English" player was Brian Carney and it appeared ridiculous to put the GB tag to that team.
Also some of the nostalgia is being viewed through rose tinted glasses.
The Great Britain international fixtures were watched by similar numbers (and in some cases much smaller numbers) to the current England games and so we are left trying to work out what the benefit would be to promote the GB "brand".
The main loss from the good old days, is the lack of proper tours of Australia and New Zealand and of course the games when those sides toured over here.

Whilst ever the Summer Era exists, these tours are just not going to happen,

Clubs in both hemispheres would not want to lose their best players for large parts of the regular season.
Therefore we will be left with token fixtures between a team labelled as GB, which is merely the England team in a different shirt and quite frankly, I'm not sure what the benefit in this would be.

The bigger issue with International RL is the lack of quality international opposition, a situation which isn't going to change any time soon.

Finally, the tours of England by Aus and NZ were superb but, with the money involved in the game nowadays at club level, particularly in Aus, there just isnt room in the calendar to stage full blown tours, no matter how much the older generation pine for them.

We don't have to have full blown tours. A three test series against either NZ or Australia incorporating a couple of test matches as warm up against PNG and a pacific Island team or something along those lines.