4 Nations, Should we have a promotional game?

[jim]

I'm talking about something similar to what Union are doing with the game in Hong Kong.

Seeing as there will most likely be 6 games and a final could we find a game to relocate? Candidates would be Wales, USA, Russia, Ireland, Scotland and maybe a few more.

Maybe something like this:

FRA V ENG - Toulouse, FRA
AUS V NZL - Jacksonville, USA
ENG V NZL - Leeds, ENG
FRA V AUS - Paris, FRA
FRA V NZL - Perpignan, FRA
ENG V AUS - Manchester, ENG

Final - London, ENG

Seeing as it will be a northern hemisphere comp next year maybe we should play all the games there even AUS V NZL. Australia and New Zealand would have to organise mid-year and warm up games if they wanted a home game for the year.

The game in Jacksonville could possibly be on at the same time as the Pacific 6 nations so a USA game could be shown before hand.

Ofcourse Moscow, Dublin, Edinburgh, Cardiff etc. could be options. Maybe If there is a European Championships running like mentioned on the Englandrl site than one game of that tournament featuring the locals could be played before hand. Imagine some of the double-headers:

Cardiff - Wales V Ireland, Australia V NZ
Edinburgh - Scotland V Wales, Australia V NZ
Dublin - Ireland V Scotland, Australia V NZ
Moscow - Russia V Wales, Australia V NZ
Jacksonville - USA V PNG, Australia V NZ
Jo'Berg - South Africa V USA, Australia V NZ

[Kiwi fan]

Why can't Australia and NZ play in one of those place as a warm up game? I couldn't see a warm up game heppening and it would probably be in Australia anyway.

[jim]

Jul 29, 2008 16:59:23 GMT 10 Kiwi fan said:

Why can't Australia and NZ play in one of those place as a warm up game? I couldn't see a warm up game heppening and it would probably be in Australia anyway.

I suppose they could take a warm up game elsewhere, but seeing as the first game would most likely be in NZ any warm up games would most likely be played in Australia or NZ.

[Druzik]

Jim I voted no... becuase I think the concept id floored. We need to get away from these Mickey mouse tournaments, 4 nations here, 3 nations there, 1 off test in there, oh lets have a world cup!

I said it before and will say it again, survival means having a set of meanigful matches in a 4 year cycle that all teams can look forward to knwoing that good consistent performances are rewarded by playing onto a 6N and lower 4N where you qualifgy to a world cup and get to play the beste teams going at that time.

If we want to promotr matches, then do what Sths and leeds did... take a game on the road. That is where the promo should be. internationals used for this are just cheapened... the Bledisloe in HK is purely a money making experiment that will backfire on them it has cheapened the matches between Oz and NZ.

[jim]

Jul 29, 2008 20:58:35 GMT 10 Druzik said:

Jim I voted no... becuase I think the concept id floored. We need to get away from these Mickey mouse tournaments, 4 nations here, 3 nations there, 1 off test in there, oh lets have a world cup!

I said it before and will say it again, survival means having a set of meanigful matches in a 4 year cycle that all teams can look forward to knwoing that good consistent performances are rewarded by playing onto a 6N and lower 4N where you qualifgy to a world cup and get to play the beste teams going at that time.

If we want to promotr matches, then do what Sths and leeds did... take a game on the road. That is where the promo should be. internationals used for this are just cheapened... the Bledisloe in HK is purely a money making experiment that will backfire on them it has cheapened the matches between Oz and NZ.

yeh I'm begining to think that way aswell. Maybe the promo games should be kept to club games. WCC may go to a neutral venue so that that would be a good promo wherever it went.

IRL definatley needs a better structure. I think what Richard Lewis proposed is a good start but there is more we can do. For a start make the England V France test an annual event and get a dirty big trophy made up so it can grow a tradition over the years. The 4 nations is a good start but in 4,5,6 years time we should look at a 6 nations comp like the one you have proposed.