If NRL expansion is the goal, it's time for the blinkers to come off

They don’t get the Courier-Mail in Leeds, but if they did I could see the occupants of Red Hall – the headquarters of the Rugby Football League – spitting out their cornflakes this morning.

The RFL wanted to reassemble Great Britain for the first time in eight years and tour Australia this October. They were going to travel from Brisbane to Sydney by bus, stopping to do coaching clinics and play midweek games against country selections, just like the old days.

No, said the RLPA. The players are overworked. There will be no games this spring involving Australia – nevermind that the Kiws side touring England will be made up almost entirely of NRL players.

That tour was organised in response to Australia telling the Lions to stay home.

So what would Nigel Wood be reading in the Courier-Mail, if it was delivered to his desk this morning, that would leave milk and Kelloggs all over his nice desk? That Penrith and Brisbane are planning on playing a post-season friendly in Hawaii.

I am the biggest fan of international expansion and I’ve spent a huge chunk of my own money over the years going to these games. On my last trip to Hawaii for a game, I was holed up in a school building until after midnight due to a tsunami warning.

But if NRL players are too tired to play internationals, they’re too tired to take a funded end-of-season trip to Hawaii where playing a game is the only way to get it past the post with the NRL.

I’d love a tax deductible trip to Hawaii more than anything but international development is now too important to be driven by clubs looking for jolly. And as for the risks … should I mention the words ‘South Sydney’ and ‘Arizona’ in this sentence?

The pre-season is the time for NRL clubs to spread the word. The post season is for national teams. And trial matches should not be played in any club’s home market – every single one should be staged ‘on the road’ where a club’s home patch isn’t polluted and where the sort of missionary work being proposed here can be done under the tighter discipline that applies to players in the pre-season.

If Penrith and Brisbane are really motivated by spreading the game, they’ll play in Honolulu in February. Of course, they’ll say there’s too much at stake then – well we want our ambassadors to always feel there’s a lot at stake when they travel overseas.

Clubs should have little to no input into where they play outside of their own home games. The NRL funds them, the NRL should tell them when and where to play.

If you go past League Central on Driver Avenue in Sydney, you’ll see a series of raised logos on the façade of the building.

There’s the NRL badge, the NSWRL, the QRL, the CRL and then all the other states. All of them follow the same basic pattern, with only the colours and a few letters altered from one to the next.

It’s a compelling corporate image; a national sporting body united in promoting the great game of rugby league, with territories where the sport is a minor players seemingly just as important as those where it is king.

But there’s one problem: the big metal Tasmanian Rugby League logo probably cost more than rugby league has spent there over the past 12 months. There is no rugby league in Tasmania as I write this.

The NRL are doing some great expansionary work with the MCG Origin a highlight of the century so far. And the Pacific Tests have gone from one a year to two to maybe a couple of rematches at the end of the year.

But the frames of reference remain a little narrow.

If Ireland or Lebanon or Malta want to play on the representative weekend, why can’t they also get support from the NRL? Would the clubs release their players as readily as they do the Polynesians and Melanesians? Why do they not deserve to be on Fox Sports? Are they really Tests when Super League players aren’t available?

And if we are trying to encourage kids to play the game in the developing states, why should they not have the same opportunities as those in NSW and Queensland?

Why don’t Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Northern Territory (no point with Tasmania right now) have sides picked on an Origin basis, just as NSW and Queensland do? Why don’t their amateurs get to mix with professionals, just as those from other countries do?

At the moment, it seems we are looking to make Brenton Lawrence a Queenslander and Young Tomumaipea a New South Welshman, rather than making them pioneers for South Australia and Victoria, where we vaguely hope to produce more players in future.

That’s not a sport with a long-term plan to become truly national, in my opinion.