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You speak as if Rugby League died in France after WWII but in actual fact it was very strong in the 1950's. A decade which saw them complete 2 very successful tours of Australia and also hold the inaugural World Cup in front of pretty good crowds. French rugby league was pretty resilient to...

It makes sense to have squads of this size size for cost reasons, but I'm not convinced there is a good reason to be so restrictive on replacements. It's really not ideal for teams to be switching a lot of players in and out so I don't see too much stupid shit that needs to be discouraged...

Great post WCR! Agree with all that and have been saying similar for a while regarding points 1 and 2. The other thing I'm really interested to follow is the Americas 6 Nations. It's great that Argentina, who are now well and truly in the SANZAR fold are championing this. It's also a potential...

Well because maybe player x is not as crucial to the team as player y. In our case, if Moore gets injured for a week it would be ideal to replace the 5th winger. I think it's a bit inflexible that you can't do that, I mean are world rugby trying to protect player's feelings or something? You...

Agreed. The way I think about it is that SANZAR and USA Rugby have what the other needs. SANZAR have a tonne of professional rugby expertise (and the best teams in the world) while the US have the biggest and most promising growth market in the sport. SANZAR can help the USA become a rugby...

Okay well if that's the case I'm with you guys on it being too big a risk.

Okay then forget the change when the tournament starts thought. But I'd bet that if Moore gets a 1 week injury that someone else would get replaced in the squad. Or are you saying that a player can only be replaced if it's for a medical or compassionate reason relating to them specifically?

Who's to say a 3rd hooker won't be brought in for one of the excess wingers right at the start of the tournament? Or if not then certainly if one of the hookers get a 1 week injury. Cheika said he wants 2 full 15's so they can have proper opposed sessions in training. Maybe once the...

And this is where opportunity lies for SANZAR.

Yep and that increase in youth participants will start to pay off at elite levels in the next few years. Seems inevitable that the US will be a top team sooner than later. I hope the ARU and SANZAR can capitalise on this.

Another significant thing with this game - when the Wallabies get to Chicago they and the Eagles are going to have to do a media blitz for 2 weeks. There's still a lot of tickets unsold.

I tend to agree. I don't think this will be anywhere near the blowout that the All Blacks match was. 1 we're not as good, 2 we will play an experimental lineup while the USA will play their best team, and 3 that US squad will have been training and playing together for months now, as opposed...

He's borderline for them as a starter. Didn't perform that well in the Pacific Nations Cup and if the US play Samu Manoa at lock then I'd guess he'll probably be on the bench. The US have some very good players but just have a few too many positions of weakness to be a good chance of making...

I think it's a decent gesture from the Rising to make this first game a defence, but I hope it doesn't set a precedent where every team puts it on the line for all games they play.

So it's officially the Horan-Little Shield and the Rising will be putting it up for grabs in their first match this weekend away to Qld Country. I assume that means the shield has been made? Any of you guys seen it or know when we'll get to see what it looks like?

Doubt there's any chance of that happening. The games between Tonga, Argentina and Georgia will be pretty physical!

There actually was an NRC Facebook page that was set up last year by a fan that had a decent number of followers and posted or shared a lot of content. But the ARU had it shut down on copyright grounds. And yet they haven't made one of their own. It's bizarre, because I'm sure I read in a recent...

Well it discouraged them to the extent that they were rare. A little more common than drop goal attempts. I think they hit their target in the bullseye. Very happy with that personally and I bet the ARU are too. It's also something I predicted while a lot of people on this site argued it...

And at that time there was no such thing as penalty goals in rugby so there goes that argument. The NRC points system increases the value of conversions, so goal kicking remains crucially important.

Pretty good result for Scotland. Maybe they will be a threat at the world cup. Pool B will certainly be very interesting. I'm sure Japan will be disappointed to lose by 25 but it was a pretty strong World XV team. They don't seem quite in the form they were a couple of years ago though and to...