Sentence examples for expanded championship from inspiring English sources

The league that was supposed to represent some combination of cakewalk and graveyard for Oldham and Rochdale Hornets, the two traditional clubs who found themselves excluded from the expanded Championship proper, and therefore forced to travel to all sorts of unlikely corners of the kingdom, from Gateshead to Neath, Wrexham to Hemel.

They did not manage to emulate Alain Sutter and the class of 94 in terms of the result or performance but, in this expanded championship, where so few teams fall at the group phase, the draw – on the back of their 1-0 victoverover Albania last Saturday – ought to be enough to send them through.

That competition, which was due to begin in 2018 19, would replace friendly international fixtures and would be organized in conjunction with an expanded European Championship competition in 2020, with its games to be played in 13 different European countries.

Pichot, who speaks three languages, won 71 caps for Argentina and was instrumental in the Pumas joining the major southern hemisphere nationals in an expanded Rugby Championship in 2012.

Iordanescu, meanwhile, is now back in charge of the national team going into this year's expanded European Championship – his third stint as national coach – but his side go to France 2016 as rank outsiders, exciting little optimism; the days in which his country were standard-bearers for a renascent eastern Europe long gone.

But on Saturday's evidence, while the gulf may not be as wide as in 1997 when Super League clubs were humiliated in the disastrously expanded World Club Championship, it still exists, and has certainly not narrowed since Wigan stunned the Brisbane Broncos in the last one-off Challenge in Australia in 1994.

The discussions are taking place against a backdrop of concern that the qualifying campaigns for the expanded European Championships from 2016 will prove less attractive because there will be less jeopardy.

Other differences this year include an expanded World Club Championship, pitting the top three British clubs against three from Australia later this month.

In the last game the Cowboys played in England they romped to a 48-14 win over Leeds at Headingley in August 1997 in an expanded World Club Championship.

Uefa expanded the European Championship to help its smaller members yet Michael O'Neill's accomplished team needed no assistance to reach France.

In France, football's European Championship – expanded from 16 to 24 teams for the first time – was supposed to be a feelgood celebration but will now take place under a heavy security blanket after the Paris attacks.