'Senior men must play key role for new-look England'

Head coach Shaun Wane says England must begin preparing for the 2025 Rugby League World Cup in France and wants his senior players to play a key role in developing the stars of the future.

The first step will be the Test against France at Warrington on 29 April, for which Wane anticipates a changed group.

"There will be new faces and there will be lots of them," Wane told BBC Sport.

"But I've got a lot of respect for those players and what they did in the World Cup, and I don't want to start totally afresh and bring just young players into a new camp.

"I want our existing players like Chris Hill - who's the other side of 30 - and Sam Tomkins having an influence on informing those players about how to train, their actions and the detail of what's important to me.

"That's going to be a big help to me going forward."

From the 21-strong squad Wane selected for the tournament, 10 of the group were over 30, with Hill at 34 the oldest.

While he continues to be a key figure for Huddersfield with no confirmation of retirement, Tomkins has already confirmed he will bow out at the end of the season - with Wane preparing to meet in Perpignan to discuss his potential role.

Analysing World Cup failure

Wane admitted he still found it "tough" to think about the 2021 World Cup given the nature of the defeat in golden point time and the missed opportunity of a home final.

However, he was also convinced he must stay on by the positive feedback of his players after the experience, and said every analysis had been done to uncover the reasons behind their failure to reach the final.

"I thought we played really well in the tournament," Wane added. "Before the semi-final that was as good as I've seen an England team play but when it really mattered we didn't play well.

"That's what we have to analyse, that's what I've done. I've looked at everything I did, how I coached, the messages I verbalised to the players; was it right? was it wrong? was it too much?

"Did we train too hard? Did we not train hard enough? We've really gone into a lot of detail and come up with a few decisions about how we can do things better.

"In hindsight, it's quite easy. But we have make sure now we're prepared for the 2025 World Cup."

Taking England and rugby league forward

Although England's semi-final exit denied rugby league a home showpiece and the chance to emulate the kind of momentum push enjoyed by rugby union with their 2003 success, there was a significant commercial opportunity for the game in last autumn's rescheduled tournament.

Almost 30m people viewed the matches as a whole, with the highest peak of 2.8m for the England-Samoa game at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium.

Wane, who is fiercely passionate about rugby league with almost 40 years of engagement as player and coach, is desperate to see the sport gain traction.

What could be key to that dream is the National Rugby League in Australia and their collective bargaining agreement with players over welfare objectives, and the appetite for regular southern-northern hemisphere match-ups.

"It's important that we take it to the next level," Wane added. "Playing against Greece at Sheffield, there was a good crowd, it felt big, it felt 'international'.

"The eyes on the sport that the World Cup created was immense, and we need to carry on. We've got the greatest game in the world.

"We need to increase that and jump on the back of that and we'll do that by having a really good international programme."