ENGLAND’S rugby league side will not be packed full of ‘plastic Poms’ for 2017’s mid-season test.
And Great Britain are likely to come back to the international fold in the next few years.
After the recent Four Nations tournament, which SunSport revealed may yet happen in 2018, talks on the future of international rugby league are taking place.
Super League coaches, including St Helens’ Keiron Cunningham and Warrington’s Tony Smith, let rip at England’s pre-season training camp in Dubai which sees the competition’s finest whisked away in January.
But worries that national boss Wayne Bennett will flood his team with Australian NRL players who have English ancestry, including Trent Hodkinson and Blake Austin, for May’s match against Samoa in Sydney were allayed by Rugby Football League boss Nigel Wood.
He also revealed he hopes a Great Britain series, which could see players from England, Wales and Scotland team up, is played before the 2021 World Cup.
Wood said: “I’m not concerned about that at all. We’ll apply the rules as they exist but one of the reasons to undertake a mid-season international is to give the players a chance to play for England.
“It would be self-defeating if we drag in players who in future would be on the periphery of the international team.
“Great Britain is part of the discussions about the game going forward, whether there will be tours to Australia or New Zealand or home tours.
“They are attractive propositions and I’d be disappointed if by the end of the next international cycle (2021) I didn’t have some news on that.”
Wood also confirmed there are no plans in place to have pre-season camps or mid-season internationals in future years beyond 2017.
And he backed Bennett, who Cunningham claimed said he would not take the England job if he did not get his way.
He added: “He’s challenged us as an organisation.
“He’s challenged the sport in this country to say this is what I think we need to do to become as good as the best in the world.
“And I think that is a healthy challenge. It’s appropriate if you’re going to often someone who’s regarded as best in class, then you’ve probably got an obligation to listen to what he’s telling you when he says this is what we need to do to do better internationally.
“I think it’s a really interesting period of time for the national team, it’s really positive.”
Bennett’s current contract expires after the World Cup, which takes place in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea next Autumn.
But Wood hinted the Aussie may yet stay on beyond the tournament.
“That’s not an impossibility,” he conceded.
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