Senior rugby league officials are considering reviving the Great Britain brand to replace England for next year’s tour of Australia to try to provide the international game with a much-needed boost. England’s men are scheduled to visit Australia next year for three Test matches in the first Ashes series since 2003. The women’s side will play Australia in Las Vegas in March, before a two-Test series later in the year alongside the men.
The Rugby Football League and RL Commercial, the marketing arm of the sport, are giving serious consideration to bringing back the Lions for the men and the women. The idea has strong support at administrative level, with the belief that Great Britain touring Australia would create a significant buzz, greater than if England were touring.
The Great Britain brand has been largely dormant this century, despite being a hugely popular concept for much of rugby league’s existence, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. It was revived in 2019 for a tour of New Zealand but that was largely dismissed as a commercial failure.
It is believed that at a time when the international game is floundering after England’s low-key Test in France last month, a return for the Lions – in the same year when their rugby union counterparts are touring Australia – would drive more interest from supporters and commercially in the tour.
However, the one criticism of a Great Britain return would be that it would be effectively an England side under a different banner. There are almost certainly no Welsh, Scottish or Irish players who would be called into a Lions squad; in 2019, the Australian-born Scotland full-back Lachlan Coote was the sole non-English representative.
The story is slightly different in the women’s game, with a number of Welsh players likely to push for contention in a Great Britain Lionesses squad. They have not played under that banner since 2003 when the sport was amateur, but the evolution of the Women’s Super League in recent years has helped women’s rugby league make great strides.
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If approved, they would be the first team to play as Great Britain in 2025 when they face the Jillaroos in Las Vegas in March alongside a Super League game between Wigan and Warrington and two NRL fixtures. The men would then follow suit as the Ashes returns after an absence of more than two decades.