Fans of international rugby league can look forward to more events coming from more glamorous locations than ever before, if Danny Kazandjian, boss of the Rugby League European Federation (RLEF), sees his dreams to fruition. He will be announcing the details of the 2017 World Cup qualifiers shortly and is working hard on getting rugby league included in the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Interviewed at his central London office, he also said that the European Championship should be held annually, regardless of England’s involvement.

“When we announce the dates and venues for the World Cup qualification process, I think people will be excited,” said Kazandjian, who indicated that there will be one event in the Middle East and another in Florida this autumn. The European qualifiers will start this year with the Euro B and Euro C competitions feeding into the final round of games in 2016, featuring Wales and Ireland. Despite England and Scotland being in the Four Nations, there will be also be a three-team 2016 European Championship “if the sums add up” as there will be no funding from the Rugby League International Federation.

“The European Championship is a magnificent, historic brand and the sport needs to respect it and capitalise on it,” says Kazandjian, a north Londoner who set up the code in Lebanon. “It needs nurturing. Our ideal would be to have a European Championship every year other than in World Cup year.”

The RLEF are desperate to get the Euros established on an annual basis, with or without England, knowing that broadcasters want a stable competition if they are going to pay for TV rights. And unlike 2012, it won’t feature England Knights again.

“The members were very clear they don’t want an England team unless it’s the sovereign team. The Knights convincingly beating everybody doesn’t help anyone. You can take a thrashing from the full England team every four years and use it to gauge improvement, and every four years a nation can potentially step up from Euro B.”

As new International Federation chief executive David Collier talks of establishing another major international event between World Cups, and the leading three nations admit that tours are now considered more financially attractive than Four Nations tournaments, the Commonwealth Games could fill the void. Having staged a successful Under-19 Nines tournament in Scotland last summer, plans are in place for men’s and women’s events in Gold Coast in 2018, featuring players from NRL clubs.

“We got recognition as a Category 3 sport in 2011 and applied for Category 2 but the Commonwealth Games Federation are undergoing some changes. Indications are that they are going to have 14 core sports and chose three out of five optional sports for three consecutive Games starting from 2022. Nobody suggests it’s going to be easy but we have a principal advantage in that the only country to bid for Commonwealth Games broadcast rights is Australia. If we’ve got the elite NRL players involved in medal-event Nines at the Commonwealth Games, those broadcasters are likely to want it. The hosts benefit from commercial revenue so that is an extremely attractive business package and incredibly important.

“David Collier is close to senior figures at the CGF and I think we’ve got a chance. There will be major sports competing to be one of those optional events but my hope is that we will be a medal event in 2022 in Durban.”

Foreign quota

The season is reaching a crescendo across the channel. Having thrashed Avignon to secure a place against Lézignan in the French Cup Final at Carcassonne on 11 April, Saint-Estève-XIII Catalan will clinch a league semi-final berth if they beat Carcassonne on Sunday. Coached by former Dragon Cyrille Gossard, the Catalans reserves could yet win the domestic double. Central to their efforts are wonderfully named try-scoring winger Windy Buche, the goal-kicking of the Andy Gregory-shaped Joan Guasch, and former Warrington academy stand-off Louis Jouffret.

Lézignan, who have collapsed in the pool stage, salvaged their season with a gritty 8-4 win over AS Carcassonne in the other cup semi-final. They do not want for experience: in their ranks are full-back Tony Duggan, centre Cyril Stacul and veteran prop Jamal Fakir, who made a familiar trip to the sin bin.

Laurent Garnier’s Carcassonne – who can call on the likes of Australian Luke Rooney, Ireland’s Haydn Peacock and French international Maxime Gresque – will hope to avoid defeat to Saint-Esteve in their final group game, as the loser will have to play a quarter-final tie.

The experiment of mixing Elite 1 and 2 teams in pools B and C – the Gallic version of our middle-eight qualifiers – hasn’t worked. Top flight clubs Limoux, Palau, Avignon and Villeneuve have been far too good for their second-tier opponents and will play off among themselves for a chance to reach the quarter-finals. There have been a couple of familiar names in pool C, though: former Featherstone prop Lamont Bryan and ex-London Broncos pivot Martin Smith both signing for Lescure d’Albigeoois from London Skolars.

Toulouse, under rookie coach Sylvain Houles, the former London and Wakefield winger, have romped through the Poule des As. With Vinnie Anderson and Maxime Gresque rolling back the years and full-back Mark Kheirallah in top form with hands and boot, they remain favourites to be retain their title on 9 May.

Clubcall: Leigh Miners Rangers

Hats off to National Conference League club Miners for becoming only the fourth amateur team to reach the Challenge Cup fifth round, thanks their 32-6 win over League 1 side Oxford last Saturday at Leigh Sports Village. Their reward is a home tie with York City Knights, who comfortably saw off another amateur side, Featherstone Lions, coached by former England half-back Jamie Rooney. York will travel to Lancashire slightly anxiously in three weeks’ time, I suspect. The other remaining amateur, Normanton Knights were hammered at Wakefield by Batley, who will fancy beating Swinton next to mix it with the big guns in the last 16.

Goal-line drop-out

Whoever decided to stage Boots N’ All in the Sky studios cafe while the coffee machine drowned out the pundits may have known hardly anyone would be watching. Or else the viewers have switched off in dismay. According to BARB’s figures, Sky’s rugby league magazine show is being watched by just 22,000 folk, although that still puts it in the top 10 most weeks on Sky Sports 4. Live Super League, however, is faring rather well. So far, Friday night games have been watched by between 120-188,000, the largest audience being for Wigan v Huddersfield, the third largest show of the week on Sky Sports 1, beaten only by the Sunday double-bill of Premier League football (watched by 1-2million). Rarely is Super League beaten by anything but live football across the Sky Sports network.

All three World Club Series games were in Sky Sports’ top 10 shows that week: Warrington-St George (140,000), Wigan-Brisbane (169,000) while a whopping 225,000 saw Souths smash Saints, Sky’s fifth-biggest show, behind four football matches.

Thursday night games have a solid audience, between 130,000 and 156,000, always in SS3’s top two shows of the week. Wigan again drew the biggest audience for the season-opener at Widnes, SS2’s top programme of the week. Even the Saturday afternoon broadcasts from Perpignan are relative hits for SS4: they’ve ranged from 63,000 to 81,000 - very similar to what BT Sport are getting for European club rugby union at the same time.

All of which underlines just how vital it is to have a presence on the Beeb, given that BBC1 has around a 22% audience share and BBC2 6%. Sky Sports does well to capture a total of 2.5% across all its channels while BT Sport can only manage half a per cent. Tanya Arnold’s Super League Show is almost certainly the most-watched rugby league programme on TV.

Fifth and last

Anyone wondering what happened to Mark Offerdahl, who was supposed to be playing for Bradford Bulls this season? Well, the USA forward is getting stuck in for Tweed Heads Seagulls in the Queensland Super Cup, injury ruling him out of a move to Odsal from Illawarra Cutters. Last year the granite prop impressed for North Wales Crusaders and coached at Chester Gladiators. The year before he appeared for AS Carcassonne in Elite 1, Connecticut Wildcats in the AMNRL and the Tomahawks in Canada, France and at the World Cup. All this, and his junior team was called Goondiwindi Boars.

Follow No Helmets Required on Twitter and Facebook