Recent content by Highlander35

the post olympic alignments and constant mess around with series locations and formats has really taken a lot of magic out. I mean its 8 teams per tournament now and we still have team GB

Isn't the income tax situation in whichever union their registered in (Qatar) something extremely low like 10% anyway? Not sure how much more benefit you could proscribe.

My best guess is would be a combination of the extra players, different requirements around equipment, gym work and recovery, and on average the less financially supported nature of of Unions outside the the 6 Nations and RC. An extra year does feel excessive though. Not sure where you'd put it...

Seattle is the last inaugural team for the league right?

Saudi on Tob

Don't ask me, I just like the ATO getting what it's owed more generally so take a passing interest, I've not involved myself in the specifics for yonks since someone I know is involved in the case and I know if I paid active interest I would end up asking them way too many questions about it...

I think they've existed for a long time but only got beefed up in ~2019 to be of actual utility, but we went into COVID and killing businesses wasn't going to be seen to be the done thing. Edit: A quick google suggests various changes between 2012 and 2022 all turning a paper tiger into an...

Not to go too hard on the politics but I mean up until quite recently that's been the point no? Between funding and policy (both spoken and unspoken) the job was to substantially get out of the way of businesses to keep people employed, drive productivity/GDP etc. etc. it's only been in the...

I am shocked that there's not an acceptable solution when tens of millions of dollars are on the line for highly legally educated individuals against a body for which any concession might have significant downstream effects for its current and past operations.

do their day jobs with Panasonic i would assume

I hope there's at least 4/5 world cups at 24 teams before we talk about further expansion.

Wales can't exactly be talking about dropping 2 teams and then say "you'll be blacklisted for selection if you take a new well paid opportunity" they have a different PR game to everyone else.

League still has a hard tier system and calendar year lockout for international eligibility rather than the flat and 3 full years system that Union has for international competition right?

Saudi on top

Interesting. I mapped it out based on rankings as of today presuming that Samoa and Chile make it through one way or another and it creates some substantial swings in pots 3 & 4. Obviously many games left to play which could shuffle things about. Pathway Matters Pot 1 Pot 2 Pot 3 Pot 4...