Not that I'm a travel agency expert, but you'd hope that the powers that be think outside the box and schedule each of the 10 UK sides fixtures with fans in mind. A /Saturday/ Sunday game v Catalan followed by a Friday night game v Toulouse would see plenty of fans consider a week away.....if they're really clever, SL/The RFL could corner the market on package tours.
Might also persuade an airline to get on board as a sponsor???

Hopefully a TV deal with French TV can get sorted too, if Catalan and Toulouse can play home games every other week we'd have at least three games of super league on TV every week. (Maybe 4 if the free to air rights for the 10 or so games get sorted)?

you'd really hope so......
Massive is an understatement when describing how important 2022 in for the game in the Northern Hemisphere.....potentially a fantastic year with 5+ games on TV each week.....

This i was thinking this, but RFL and Super League aren’t known the effective planning. A week in France to play both teams with some wine touring in between, it will be like the film “Sideways” in real life

I agree there seems a myriad of opportunities to maximise this gift (well I think it is) of having two French teams in the top flight. Unfortunately when you have a Chief Exec who's natural level is lottery manager at a Championship 1 club, you do worry.

When asked why he'd personally intervened to stop a multi-million Euro TV deal with Canal plus, Rimmer replied "Well they'd be crying anyway tha' knows".

4 PEOPLE, 2 WEEKS, 1 CAMPER.
A quick search found RV total rental price €1,435, flights about €200 each return, petrol etc....call it €3,000 for 4 people for 2 weeks in France...£650 each or just .£50 a day each....if [u[i[size=150your[/size[/i[/u club was to market that to it's core supporters, I reckon you'd get plenty of takers........

as I say...Joined up thinking required, but If i can search from 12,000 kms away, surely rimmer can see the benefit?

Yes I can see the benefit and it’s a good idea. So with that I’m 90% sure it won’t happen.

Anyone know what the weather and wine is usually like there for the team that gets an away trip in January / February….

Would be great for the fans but, clubs are unlikely to want to have their players in France all week and wouldn't want to go over there 2 weeks on the bounce.
What may work is if they played the 2 French games, say Friday and Monday, which would give fans chance to visit both places, even if their own side was only playing in one of the games ?
Equally, I know that places like Castleford and Wigan may not be the greatest places to spend the night bur, there could be some opportunities in the opposite direction. There are some great places to visit "up North".

Its not two weeks though is it?...play Catalans on Saturday, Toulouse on Thursday or Friday or vice versa. Makes much more sense to me.
You say teams wouldn't want their players there, but what they going to do back home other than train. Some warmer weather training will have benefits and also help them prepare for the 2nd game....plus its a 5/6 day opportunity for team building and developing team / tour spirit which you usually only get pre-season.

Its a great opportunity all clubs should jump at imo. .....the only challenge i see is small minded chairmen who will only see the cost of 5/6 days in hotels, rather than opportunity and benefit this brings. Yet, if they stopped looking at this negatively, even they would see that we can probably bring a tour operator as sponsor (to do all the fans packages) who would be only too happy to cover these costs for the deal.....Now thats a trade off sponsor with ACTUAL value...much better than free livery on lorrys and free pizzas

....Toronto achieved it with Air Canada....they could go and talk to them for some tips if they hadn't been equally small minded to kick them out.

Its no wonder the game has never reached its potential with the level of small minded ambition we have from not only fans, but those who are running the game!

I saw the Toulouse chief executive say they had to find to find around 500,000 euros to fund charter flights.



The funds the English teams would need to find to stay in France for a week is tiny compared to that and should be more than doable.

Yep good opportunities for reciprocal tourism outside of the actual matches which the league could look to for further sponsorship etc.

You could offer package deals with loads of excursions. Somewhere central like West Yorkshire gives you easy access to pretty much everywhere in Northern England.

Clearly that won’t happen though and they’ll get a sponsorship with pedigree chum as the official dog food of super league for 3 and 6 or something and bang on about that.

The Catalans and Toulouse away in a week idea is genius. I think you'd get 1,000 fans from most clubs taking that up at least depending on the timing in the year. You should also be able to find some sponsorship deals with the airlines, they will have flights with less than 100% capacity that they will be delighted to reduce the price of a ticket on in exchange for some advertising on Sky and the French stations.

Make it happen.

Its hardly rocket surgery.

The problem is it really is for our overlords.

It would give the clubs the choice to either travel back and forth getting the expense out of the way or staying in France and doing some ‘warm weather training’

thought it was either brain surgery or rocket science never heard rocket surgery

Not sure what British sitcom it's from, but the expression it's neither rocket surgery nor brain science is one of my favourite expressions......it could be only fools...sound very delboy...like the world is your lobster

Not sure it is...isn’t it a quote Barrie Mac once said on sky before they explained it to him

Exactly it’s an absolute no brainer that you can easily cover the costs of through bringing on board a travel sponsor like Toronto did. Then costs the clubs next to nothing for giving a travel operator the opportunity to package deals to 1k plus fans who’d go from every club to French week!!
Also makes it more achievable for the average fan unable to afford two short trips to France a year plus their family holiday etc

...because of all this, and because it’s rugby league it’s why it’ll probably never happen!!