Earlier this summer, I was looking forward to watching the Rugby League World Cup, albeit on telly. The authorities had offered the tournament to the BBC for virtual buttons and I was sure they would take them up on it. I felt we had a decent enough team, too, so we stood a chance. We’d certainly reach the semi-finals and if you make it that far, anything is possible. Isn’t it? But I reckoned without the idiotic structure of the tournament, whereby there were two wildly uneven groups out of which at least one top team would fail to qualify from. Who knew it would be England?
In truth, the Rugby League World Cup is barely a world cup at all. Australia is the biggest and best RL nation on the planet and not only do they supply great players to their own team, they supply other nations, like England, with what are known as ‘heritage players’, who are essentially Aussies but have English blood, sometimes way back in their ancestry. The likes of Tonga are the same, Lebanon is almost entirely a team comprising Aussies, with Lebanese roots. It’s basically England and France, who are hopeless, from the northern hemisphere and Australia, New Zealand and a bunch of Pacific Island teams. And Lebanon. But I would have watched it until the BBC declined the opportunity and the organisers sold the rights to Premier Sports. I could have shelled out extra cash to watch it, but I pay so much to cable companies already, the line has to be drawn somewhere. For me, the line came above the Rugby League World Cup.
England have had two comfortable wins so far, against Papua New Guinea and the wretched French, but lost to Samoa. That’s enough to see you eliminated in this bonkers set up and come Sunday, all bar ten of the England squad will be flying back to Old Blighty. Having not seen a minute of the tournament so far, I’m feeling rather glad of it.
It’s a missed opportunity for the sport. Personally, I enjoy League far more than its more middle class cousin Union, although I have an increasing admiration for the latter, thanks to the best efforts of dear friends who tolerate my ignorance on the sport (along with everything else, I’m afraid to say). The Super League product is excellent and every now and then I’ll go to a game, admittedly a Grand Final at Old Trafford or the Challenge Cup at Wembley (and once at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, which I hated. The stadium that is). I do not understand why the head honchos of the sport didn’t give the game to one of the terrestrial channels for free. At least a few hundred thousand, or maybe even a few million, people would have had the chance to see the best, mainly Australian it has to be said, players in the world. As things stand, only hardcore fans know it’s taking place. Your average Joe and Josephine won’t have even been aware of it.
Next year, it will be the Rugby Union World Cup and it will be on terrestrial TV, albeit at some stupid time of day because, again, it’s in Australia. But at least it’s there and I’ll watch a fair whack of it. It’s more of a World Cup than the Rugby League version – it could hardly be less – although barely anyone in Europe, outside the UK and France will care too much and away from Australia, the hosts, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina, apathy will rule. (There are other countries, like Japan and the South Sea Islands). But the RU suits will believe, rightly, that exposure of their sport on free to view telly will attract interest. A bloody site more than the current RL version which is being played out in front of an audience of a few men and their dogs.
Now that England are all but on their way home, I am glad I didn’t shell out extra money to watch it and in some ways I am glad the BBC declined the chance to show it. It’s been a total shit show and all that’s left the fervent hope that New Zealand will win the thing and not the behemoth that is Australia. But that’s not a good enough reason to pay up and watch it. Looking at this tournament, I suggest that the authorities would struggle to run a bath, never mind a World Championship and if they don’t think they can improve on this piss poor effort, maybe it’s time to give up and just concentrate on the club game? You might say it couldn’t get any worse, but with this lot in charge, who knows?
