Despite having a team in SL for a long time it seems the national team is no closer to being competitive. How can France improve?

they need to hire a good coach and that will help them out a lot, in the next 4 years a lot of talented young french players will be coming through.

More full-time clubs. I don't understand why people expect them to be competitive with the top nations on the back of one full-time club. It would be like Wigan playing NZ without Blake Green, Pat Richards, Anthony Gelling, Harrison Hansen, Gil Dudson, Matt Bowen and Ben Flower. They need a full-time pool of at least 30-40 players to even have a chance of being competitive. At the moment they have about 20, and half of those are reserves.

While more FT teams would you would hope improve things, it hasnt neccessarily worked for England, so essentially the same things are needed that are needed for everybody else

Better coaching at junior level, more junior clubs, just MORE of everything basically

For me it's a case if crack on doing what they are doing with Catalan and start cranking things up with Toulouse. Catalan have come on leaps and bounds and are starting to get some really decent French players coming through but these things take time. More time than they have had IMO

Given the crowd in Avignon do they have a potential ft club?

Agree with that, especially better coaching at Junior level. Some of it is god-awful.

Where to For France? good question, lets ask jean capdouze

Same as Ireland.

I agree with almost everything that has been said above. I would expand on these points a little and add two more:

1. [uBetter coaching at all levels[/u. The RLIF should provide training courses in France, using the best Australian coaches (e.g. Bennett, Bellamy, Sheens, Robinson, McGuire) during the Australian off season (which at the moment is in the early part of the French elite season). At the national level the French could have done much better. Trent Robinson would be ideal, but his current position in the NRL would preclude that. John Kear, who speaks French, would be the best choice of English coaches for the French national team.

2. [uThe expansion of the number of French clubs in Super League[/u. This will create pathways to professionalism in rugby league for more French youth, who will otherwise choose rugby union. Admitting Toulouse to Super League should be considered the first, immediate step, but not the last. Great possibilities also exist in Avignon, as the crowd last night showed. And after Avignon the SL should be considering Paris as the next (4th) base for Super League. If all those clubs were successful (and we are talking about a 10 year time frame to get to 4 clubs) then you can be sure that rugby league will take off in France. At that point the SL would be mad not to consider teams from two more French cities out of Lyon, Mille, Montpellier and Bordeaux. Then you could have a 6 team French conference within Super League, with the likelihood of a lucrative TV contract if the conference has a good geographic (and hence commercial market) spread of major cities.

3. [uChange the French Elite competition to a summer competition[/u, in alignment with Britain's competitions.

4. [uFind more commercial opportuniies for the French Elite clubs[/u, perhaps by instituting a televised mid season or end of season contest with the British Championship clubs. On the back of expanding the number of professional French clubs the number of semi-professional French Elite competition clubs will expand, and will prosper as these clubs become reserve teams and feeders of talent for the professional clubs. At the point when Paris has has a Super League club, there will need to be created a separate semi-professional regional Elite competition in the north-centre of France, which would include the entire Paris metropolitan area, and perhaps beyond.

These proposals require strategic planning. Carlos Zalduendo, the Toulouse-based head of the French Federation, is capable of this. But he needs the support of the British for any of this to be realised.

More inclusion of Toulouse in S.L warbling by Aussie Jean



How about the French players don't care about representing their country?.

We've had blame the coach, blame Super League etc....what about those on the pitch?

They need a bigger pool of players to pick from. Putting another full time French team SL would help but we need more full time French players playing in SL in general. Look at NZ, they have one FT team but they're the world champions, and just how many of NZ squad actually come from the NZ club?