THE MOST striking thing about the month of November has not been the disappointing result of the Ashes series but the extraordinary success of the Pacific Championships.
Any rugby league fan who watched the three-sided contest between New Zealand, Samoa and Tonga would have been thrilled to see the quality of the matches and, even more important, the attendances for the games in Auckland, Brisbane and Sydney.
The average crowd was 33,032 and the aggregate figure was 132,131 from four matches in total.
That figure included an extraordinary attendance of 44,682 to see Samoa beat Tonga 34-6 at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium on Sunday, 26th October.
Who could possibly have imagined a few years ago that a match between two South Pacific island nations would come close to filling what might be the most iconic rugby league stadium in the world?
And that was without Australia playing in this year’s tournament.
In fact it was probably an advantage that they didn’t, because it meant that the three nations that did compete would have all gone into the tournament believing they could win it.
As it turned out, the Kiwis were the victors in a sold-out final played at Parramatta’s CommBank Stadium.
There was an interesting contrast with the other code’s Pacific Nations Cup tournament, which involved six nations – Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, USA, Canada and Japan.
That tournament, organised by World Rugby, had eleven matches with a total attendance of 56,305, for an average crowd of 5,119 per match.
Those contrasting figures reveal how rugby league’s tournament has captured the imagination of people with Samoan and Tongan heritage in a way that the other code’s tournament hasn’t.
The Pacific Rugby League Championships were announced August 2023, as part of a $7 million investment by the NRL and Australian Government to develop rugby league in the South Pacific countries. The tournament was a continuation of the Oceania Cup, which was inaugurated in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.
That the Pacific Championships have made so much progress so quickly is a tribute to the NRL, its chairman Peter V’landys and its chief executive Andrew Abdo.
The obvious question that arises from all this is whether that sort of success could be repeated in the northern hemisphere, perhaps in a three-sided tournament involving England, France and Wales, for example.
Unfortunately there is one major factor lacking in the northern hemisphere, and that is money.
A second factor that might also be absent is a desire to revive the French and Welsh national teams to the point where they could realistically challenge England.
But I wonder whether there is an opportunity here waiting to be exploited, given that the NRL is taking such an active role in the international game, with the financial ability to invest in expanding the number of teams at the top level.
Recently the Welsh Rugby Union has announced that it is to pull its funding from one of its four regional teams, with the most likely club to be targeted being Swansea.
I have always found Wales to be fascinating territory for rugby league. If our forefathers had been able to persuade Welsh clubs to come on board in the early days of our sport, I think we would have been so much stronger today.
Since those early days, we have seen a succession of great Welsh players coming into rugby league, with several of them – Jim Sullivan, Gus Risman, Billy Boston, Lewis Jones, David Watkins and Clive Sullivan – in the Rugby League Hall of Fame.
If the NRL is serious about coming on board with the RFL, I think we should invite them to step in to form a major new club in South Wales, based in Swansea, to come into Super League and to act as a focal point for the development of rugby league in the Principality.
The Rugby League Hub recently ran a story on former NRL CEO David Moffett, which suggested that he would like to develop a new Welsh club in Wrexham.
But forget that.
If David is serious about wanting to establish a club in Wales, let him head to Swansea, with NRL backing, both financial and strategic, with the aim of developing a rugby league powerhouse there, in the same way that Gary Hetherington, alongside Darren Lockyer and Grant Wechsel, are trying to do in London.
A clear pathway into Super League, and even into the NRL, could be created for young Welsh players. And in the long term it would strengthen the Welsh international team.
“Let’s face it, the other thing the RFL should be looking at is the increasing demise of rugby union in England and certainly in other parts of the world,” said Moffett in his Rugby League Hub interview.
“They need to actually make some big calls. I don’t know whether they would have the courage to make those big calls but it should involve the NRL somehow.”
The NRL certainly isn’t afraid of making big calls, as we have seen with its venture to Las Vegas as well as its creation of the Pacific Championships.
Compared to those successful calls, some people might suggest that establishing a competitive Welsh rugby league club in Swansea and strengthening the Welsh national side looks like a bit of a doddle.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 515 (December 2025)