MY colleague Garry Schofield made a good point about the World Cup in his column last week, pointing out that with only ten teams playing in this year’s tournament, there should be some closer games than we might have expected if there had been 16 teams.
Nonetheless, I suspect that many Rugby League fans might struggle to get too excited about the format of the competition that will begin this Thursday.
It does look like a Pacific Cup competition with three teams – England, France and Lebanon – added to the mix.
The build-up to the tournament may have been much more low key than we would have liked.
But we could say the same about most of the Rugby League World Cups that have taken place in the past.
Once the tournament begins, the vast majority of Rugby League fans will begin to take notice.
And I hope plenty of English fans take out subscriptions to Premier Sports so that they can watch the tournament in time for the first game on Thursday morning.
The clash between Australia and New Zealand is likely to be the game of the tournament and could be repeated in the World Cup Final at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium on 15th November.
England face Tonga on Saturday and Garry is predicting a difficult game, with Tonga eventually coming out on top.
I’m not too sure about that.
I think England are fortunate to be playing the game in Perth, rather than in Sydney or Auckland, which have large Tongan populations. We saw the effect of that in 2017, when England just held off the Tongans in front of a tremendous sea of red.
As far as I’m aware, the Tongan population in Western Australia is much smaller, while the city has a sizeable expatriate English population.
So I’m hoping the majority of the crowd won’t be supporting the Tongans.
The Tongans have a very strong squad, with every player having NRL experience.
Their creative play will revolve around Isaiya Katoa at halfback and it’s quite obvious that he has the potential to create headaches for England defensively.
But who will Brian McDermott select for England?
Given the 23-man England squad, this would be my matchday squad: Jack Welsby, Dom Young, Hugo Savala, Herbie Farnworth, Matty Ashton, George Williams, Harry Smith, Max King, Brad O’Neill, Luke Thompson, Junior Nsemba, Victor Radley, Morgan Knowles; Six subs: Ethan Havard, Jez Litten, Morgan Smithies, Ben Currie, Kai Pearce-Paul, Ben Talty; Reserves: AJ Brimson, Zach Eckersley, Mikey Lewis, Sam Walters.
I think that team would be difficult for the Tongans to beat and in my view it has the creative quality to score some tries.
I don’t know whether Brian McDermott will agree with my selections, but whether he does or not I hope we can start the tournament with a win.
Image: NRL Photos
