If they wanted to play the game so much why didn't they organise a venue in Australia?
Exactly what I was thinking.
Why the persistency from Greenberg et al. to play the match in NZ, and all these other expensive ideas floated around in the media such as the teams travelling halfway across the other side of the world to play in New York....
The fact that the NZRL representative threw a dummy spit about the Australia vs Tonga match overshadowing the profile of the NZ vs Australia match, followed by Greenberg calling the NZRL representative over to Sydney like the disobedient school kid being ushered into the principal's office is amateur hour rubbish and a very embarrassing look for rugby league in general.
The NRL/ARLC have suppressed international RL for years all in the name of trying to protect State of Origin as the game's cash cow in Australia, and now it's very rich of Greenberg to see him getting on the high horse and demand that this Australia vs Tonga test match goes ahead, appearing like he's the good guy trying to improve the profile of test football.
I know it's been suggested in the articles that Australia was reluctant to host it due to costs of hiring out Suncorp Stadium etc. And obviously, the ARLC are not confident in hosting test matches in Sydney after the poor crowd attendances over the past decade or so there. So, why not play it in Newcastle? They'd easily get 25k+, which is more than Mt Smart Stadium's capacity. There's many other cities in Australia with venues that have 20-25k+ capacity that'd be suitable to host the test match.
The fact that the NZ vs Australia test is probably going to be at smaller stadiums such as Mt Smart instead of Eden Park shows how much RL has shrinked in NZ. But this has become so typical of international RL post-SL war that it no longer surprises me anymore: so much potential, yet always setting the bar low, consequently leading to little to no improvement. The list goes on and on, whether it is the NRL trying to protect Origin as the game's cash cow, the player's association in 2015 didn't want to play tests at the end of the year due to player burnout and so Australia only played a solitary test during that calendar year (if the dominant likes of those such as Cameron Smith, Thurston didn't want to play, fine, give other players who DO want to wear the Kangaroos jersey the opportunity to play test football, but to scrap the test altogether because of them represents everything that's wrong with this insular mindset that exists in the RL hierachy), nations outside of Australia/NZ/England given limited opportunities on the international stage despite promising performances, constant talks of reviving a modified version of the old Kangaroos tours/Ashes series....very frustrating, and an absolute mess.
