Nat bad. I actually have some faith that whatever crap we cop next year, most of it shouldn't come from the News Ltd papers at least. After all they are so closely tied to the NRL it might help censor some of the hacks therein. Plus the Courier Mail is likely to back the tournament big time because it's based in Qld. Doesn't help with others like Fitzsimons etc, in fact if the Fairfax press sees the News rags in bed with the RLIF it might even provoke a few more snipes, but hopefully not. The other reason to be hopeful is the desperation for Aussies to run successful events. It happened with Sydney 2000, the UWC and the Commonwealth Games so I don't see why we can't benefit too.