By Rebecca Wilson
January 26, 2008 12:00am
NOBODY in the US cares about rugby league. In fact, it could be said that not too many people in South Australia or Perth give a toss either.
League is not really like rugby union or Aussie rules. It doesn't travel well. Rugby league "visionaries" believe otherwise. They have found any excuse in recent years to tell us that league is a game for the entire world - that it is just a matter of time before it reaches the huge markets of China, India and the US.
Former Super League boss John Ribot told a bunch of disciples in 1996 that his rebel mob would deliver the game to an audience in Beijing and Shanghai within a couple of seasons. It would, he promised, be a rugby league revolution.
Of course, Ribot was wrong.
The establishment had tried to jump on the international bandwagon nine years earlier. They took a State of Origin game to Los Angeles, claiming this was the start of something pretty big. What it really turned out to be, besides really, really stupid, was a chance for pampered footy players to fly business class to Hollywood.
Here we are in 2008 and another couple of nuts are at it again.
Those new-age visionaries Russell Crowe and Peter Holmes a Court decided to test the waters in the US this week by carting 32 Armani-clad footballers across the world to play an exhibition match in Florida against English champions Leeds.
They have done this in the biggest two weeks in the American NFL competition. The Super Bowl is on next week, so it would be fair to say few Americans would have noticed the arrival of the South Sydney Rabbitohs in Florida.
The trip is already a disaster in so many ways. Several key players have suffered season-threatening injuries. Another bloke had to come home for "personal reasons".
Americans who have met the Rabbitohs are still convinced they are representatives of an Australian airline.
But Holmes a Court is claiming that the trip is a success.
The local paper (the Jacksonville Times Union) featured the Rabbitohs on the front page.
He told the paper that he and Crowe were the only blokes in Australia who owned a "rugby" club (he didn't correct it to league, so still no one in Florida knows the difference between union and league). He wasn't coy either, claiming he and Crowe had turned around Souths' fortunes during the past year.
What he has failed to mention to anyone is that the match will not be televised here or in the US.
Fox Sports and Channel 9 both declined the opportunity to cover the match because, surprise surprise, they didn't think there would be enough interest in it - not just in the US but anywhere.
Jacksonville is hardly a thriving metropolis. Appearing on the front page is like a minor celebrity turning up in Kalgoorlie and getting his dial on the front cover of the local rag.
Holmes a Court and Crowe will hear none of this.
Crowe is using his status as a star in the US to attract interest to the match. He says he will bring Greg Norman along to the North Florida University stadium for the match (capacity - a whopping 10,000) to prove how big the match is.
Rugby league will not be the winner on the day. It is a sport that is played primarily in three places - NSW, Queensland and the north of England. Melbourne is a possible exception, but it would be fair to say that league is a very poor second to AFL in that city.
Its very attraction rests within its tribalism - suburb against suburb, state against state. League is a quirky game which you either like or don't, depending on your heritage. Like AFL, if your dad went to the game, chances are you will want to go too.
It has no international appeal whatsoever, outside the north of England and small pockets of New Zealand. It should never have been taken west to Perth or east to the US or south to London.
When you talk to Russell Crowe, he is almost fanatical about spreading the rugby league gospel to the US. Instead of trying to get bums on seats in his own Sydney suburb, he has decided he is the messiah who can deliver what so many others before him have failed to do.
Rusty is misguided and he has an equally misguided disciple in Holmes a Court.
Souths will pay dearly for this misadventure, with several players already predictably injured. It is a self-indulgent journey that will fail to register even a glitch on the sporting horizon in the US and make those cynics at home long for the good old days when the Rabbitohs couldn't spell Amarni.
