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League's peculiar global range defies Aussie dominance
Northern-hemisphere teams trail in Australia's wake, but that does nothing to dampen the prospect of four terrific games this weekend
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Australia's Anthony Tupou in action against New Zealand last weekend. Photograph: Jason O'Brien/Action Images
Not many days go by in Australia without a reminder of the general apathy about British rugby league. The England team had been expecting to attend a press conference in Melbourne earlier today ahead of Sunday's big game against the green and golds at the Telstra Dome, but were politely told that their presence was no longer required because of a far more pressing priority: a media launch for the first match of next season's State of Origin series between Queensland and New South Wales, which will be played on neutral territory in Victoria on June 3.
If the England players had been invited, rather than left to arrange sight-seeing trips to Ramsay Street on their day off, they'd have heard Channel Nine's commentator Andrew Voss refer to Origin as "the jewel in the crown of rugby league". That's not a criticism of Voss, who showed that he's anything but an ignorant, arrogant Aussie in trying his best to talk up the patchy Poms with Peter Sterling and Laurie Daley during last Saturday's opening game against Papua New Guinea. But it was one more indication of the amount of damage that has been done to the prestige of the international game over the last four decades.
You can't really blame the Aussies, either. For the 28 years since Arthur Beetson punched his Parramatta team-mate Mick Cronin to ensure the success of the first, experimental Origin game at Lang Park in 1980, the inter-state contest has been consistently compelling and unpredictable, while games against the Old Dart have too often been anything but.
You don't have to be here long to see that for all the problems it's had in recent times Australian league remains light years ahead of the game in the northern hemisphere, at least in terms of its profile. It's the little, trivial things that sum up the gulf: the fact that the Sydney Morning Herald chose the rugby league controversy of the moment - grapple-tacking - to illustrate the closing stages of the US Presidential election, with Barack Obama in a South Sydney jumper being throttled by Melbourne's John McCain; the fact that Snoop Dogg has one of those Souths jumpers and has been parading it through the Block in Redfern with a few of the Rabbitohs players to promote a Sydney concert; the fact that Wally Lewis's son is now a star of Home and Away; the fact that Melbourne Storm are still regarded as a failure by some in Sydney because they "only" attract crowds of around 10,000 (what would Harlequins, their closest British equivalent, give for such problems?).
As suggested in a previous blog - and at the risk of sounding like even more of an establishment creep - rather than moaning about various aspects of Australia's organisation of this World Cup, maybe we should just be grateful that enough of their administrators were prepared to host it at all. They've provided an open goal to the understandably cynical and insular local league media, and it isn't immediately obvious what they stand to gain.
But there will be a big clue at the MCG on Friday night, with the second in an International Rules series between Australia and Ireland - the closest Aussie Rules gets to international competition, although from a distance it all seems a bit of a tricky business because even when the players aren't fighting, they have to compromise on the shape of the balls.
It should still be worth a watch, at least if it doesn't clash with the equally genteel Samoa v Tonga soiree in Sydney. But the AFL administrators could only look on in envy if England were to stun Australia on the other side of Melbourne and breathe new life into league's World Cup - especially as there are expected to be around 5,000 England supporters at the game, the majority of whom have flown into Victoria this week.
These early stages of the tournament have been a classic case of the glass being either half full or half empty. From this perspective, the games between England and the Kumuls in Townsville, Scotland and France in Canberra, and Ireland versus Tonga at Parramatta, have been thoroughly enjoyable occasions, celebrating rugby league's peculiar global range from industrial west Yorkshire to tropical north Queensland via Papua New Guinea and Catalonia, with the only damp squib so far coming from New Zealand's no-show in Sydney.
A couple of the responses to the last blog focused on the empty seats and a local Australian row about television coverage - but anyone with memories of the last World Cup really shouldn't have such lofty expectations.
Instead, we've got the prospect of four terrific games this weekend: tribal warfare at the foot of the Blue Mountains tomorrow; Fiji's eagerly-awaited debut against the equally appealing French in Wollongong on Saturday, followed by the c**k-a-hoop Kumuls having a crack at the unconvincing Kiwis on the Gold Coast; and then the big one here in Melbourne on Sunday. Sorry, but I'm struggling to find anything to be miserable about.
