Rugby League World Cup final: Fans shouldn't panic - the sport finally has a plan to turn atheists into believers

In Australia, where the final will be played on Saturday, the tournament has struggled to capture the imagination but that shouldn't take away from the strides that have been made

Jonathan Liew
Chief Sports Writer
Friday 01 December 2017 12:49 GMT
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The sport has much to be proud of ahead of the tournament's final game
The sport has much to be proud of ahead of the tournament's final game

It’s a truism of rugby league fans that when in each other’s company, they love nothing more than to have a good gripe about the sport. Useless administrators, ham-fisted scheduling, an apathetic media: you name it. Even as the World Cup, the sport’s greatest showcase, reaches its long-awaited climax, you still hear occasional voices of dissent.

In Australia, where the final will be played on Saturday, the tournament has struggled to capture the imagination. Attendances have been disappointing. Even a home semi-final against Fiji in footy-mad Brisbane saw the stadium less than half full. One day before their final against England, there were still plenty of tickets available online. It will not be a sell-out.

Partly, you feel, this is because of the inequity of the contest. England have played well to reach the final, but still most observers and all the bookmakers expect the Kangaroos - the game’s dominant force - to stuff them easily. But there is also a sense here that rugby league is primarily a domestic rather than an international phenomenon. Throughout the last few weeks, coverage of the tournament has had to take a back seat to the 24-hour circus that is the NRL, and its off-season transfer rumour mill.

England came up short against Australia in the tournament opener and face them again in the final

In England, the tantalising possibility of a first World Cup triumph in 45 years has partly disguised a wider puzzlement towards international rugby league: a concept everybody seems to want to work, but nobody can quite decide how. Online forums and social media thrum with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation: not simply over the prospect of defeat, but that the strides made during this tournament may ultimately prove fruitless.

It’s easy to get down about the international game. It consists of very few good sides, playing very few matches that make very little money, certainly compared to other major sports. The schedule is threadbare and erratic; smaller nations struggle to compete, and so struggle to get games, and so struggle to compete. One of the biggest shocks of the tournament so far was a low-scoring quarter-final in which Fiji beat 2008 world champions New Zealand 4-2. It was the first time they had ever played each other.

And yet, amid the gloomy prognosis, it is equally easy to forget the strides that have been made. Rugby league often likes to exist in a state of permanent existential crisis, but not so long ago, it was virtually dead at international level. The 2000 World Cup, held in England, was a disaster: tiny crowds, poor organisation, confected sides like ‘Aotearoa Maori’ and epic mismatches like Australia 110-4 Russia. Four years later, the 2004 World Cup was scrapped. Not deferred, not rearranged; just cancelled, like a bad TV show. Imagine any other sport doing that.

Fiji dumped New Zealand out in the shock of the tournament

This World Cup has still exposed plenty of flaws in the international game. Competitiveness is still a problem: fewer than a third of matches have been settled by two scores or less. The pool system achieves the neat trick of being both incomprehensible and unfair: Ireland won two games out of three and went home, Samoa won none out of three and made the quarter-finals. Australia’s iron-tight grip, whatever the result on Saturday, remains chronic.

Tonga and their fans lit up the tournament

But for the first time in its history, the sport has a direction of travel. A regular, four-year World Cup, which in 2021 will expand to 16 teams. New markets: the United States, Canada, even West Africa. The outstanding performance of Pacific nations like Tonga and Fiji and Papua New Guinea, where rugby league is the national sport, have shown the way forward.

Most importantly at all, it has some semblance of a plan, some green saplings of promise, the will to grow this great sport into something more substantial. The Australia coach Mal Meninga is a genuine evangelist for the international game. Back home, the Rugby Football League must do more to make Super League a big-city as well as a small-town game: even in its traditional northern heartlands (cliche alert), places like Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield have the most minimal elite presence.

England will hope to crown their tournament with what would be a win against the odds

All this, however, needs to be understood in a certain context. Sport itself is rapid and instant. Heroes are made in a hurry. Careers are made and broken at the drop of a pass. But cultural, structural change in sport: this stuff takes years, even generations. It takes money and vision and thankless graft and a little luck. Sometimes it is all too easy to have a gripe. But here’s the other thing about league fans: they may like a grumble amongst themselves, but they never tire of telling outsiders how wonderful their sport is. On the eve of its showpiece, it is this impulse that needs to be channelled if rugby league is to convert atheists into believers

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