WHILE the Socceroos continued on their almost perfect road to the World Cup this week, the Australian rugby league team was busy preparing for what must surely be the greatest non-event of all time - the World Cup of rugby league.
Soccer's four-yearly celebration is one of the showpieces of world sport. It is right up there with the Olympic Games and fanatics could quite rightfully argue it is even bigger than the five-ring circus.
To qualify for football's World Cup is a massive achievement. It takes months and months of jumping through hoops to earn your ticket.
Sadly, the same cannot be said for the league event. For those of you who don't know, the 18-match tournament starts in Sydney next week.
It features teams from such league superpowers as Scotland and Tonga. They will play a round-robin competition in league strongholds along the eastern seaboard. Sadly, one of only two games that matters in the entire tournament - Australia versus England - will be played in Melbourne. And we all know how much Melbourne loves its league.
I am a huge rugby league fan. For about 26 weekends a year, I am glued to the box watching the best league competition in the world - the National Rugby League.
When it's over, though, it's bloody well over. As soon as the long weekend passes, we hang up our league and AFL boots and replace them with cricket pads or jockey silks.
The last thing we need in October and November at the end of a very, very long football season is a meaningless league tournament played in front of crowds (I use that term loosely) who really don't care about the outcome.
There are three nations who play league at any sort of elite level. Australia, New Zealand and England are the trio of countries in which rugby league is played at club level in quite large numbers.
Tonga, Scotland, Ireland and Fiji are rugby union and soccer strongholds. The likelihood that participation in a league World Cup will in any way change the status quo in any of these countries is very, very low.
Then there is the dilemma facing television directors - how to conceal empty stands from the audience watching Ireland play Tonga at Parramatta Stadium. Unless they start giving the tickets away now, and promising a free carton of beer with them, no one can honestly expect a crowd to front.
This can only mean one thing. Rugby league suffers from a massive inferiority complex. While the AFL is content to rest on its domestic laurels, pockets of the league community are intent on trying to turn their game into an international one. This will, of course, never happen.
Tournament organiser Colin Love is the chairman of the Australian Rugby League, the body that runs representative rugby league. Somehow, Love managed to convince the NRL that holding a tournament at the end of a gruelling league season was a good idea.
The NRL has even offered its marketing expertise to help sell those thousands of tickets very few people really want to buy. I still haven't met anyone who has paid for a ticket.
The Australian selectors are the only ones who have attracted any publicity so far. They picked two Broncos players who are still being investigated over an alleged sexual assault in a public toilet several weeks ago.
League needs to have a look at rugby union. It is an international game that knows exactly what side its bread is buttered on.
The Wallabies are about to embark on a tour of Hong Kong and Europe.
The Bledisloe Cup match against New Zealand in Hong Kong has been sold out for months.
The Tests in Europe are a highlight of the rugby union calendar few union fans here miss. But the Wallabies don't go to Somalia or Brazil to play matches.
Union bosses play to their audience. League just never learns.
The geniuses behind this folly will all stand around at the World Cup final between two of the three teams who can play and congratulate themselves on what a sterling achievement the whole farce has been.
In fact, it should never have happened at all. Why wouldn't we just put a team from England on a plane to Sydney, play two Tests and hand over a trophy at the end of it?
Australia already play against New Zealand on Anzac Day. League fans could easily surmise who is the best in the world with just two or three Test matches a year.
Rugby league has a wonderful domestic product. While that is apparently not enough for the minority who keep flogging a dead horse, it should be.
