ANYONE who attended the MKM Stadium for the World Club Challenge clash between Hull KR and Brisbane Broncos surely couldn’t have failed to come away from the game feeling impressed by the spectacle they had witnessed.
The Robins’ dominant performance for 60 minutes, followed by a sublime comeback from the Broncos that came near to snatching victory, was drama of the best kind and it was presented in the perfect setting of a modern stadium packed to the rafters.
It was an event that the RFL and the NRL would surely want to replicate and make even bigger in the future.
But it’s difficult to be sure about how the two governing bodies see the future of the World Club Challenge.
On the other hand, one of the 144 recommendations of the recently published RFL Strategic Review is that the season should begin with a Charity Shield game between the Super League Champions and the Challenge Cup winners from the previous season.
The recommendation is clearly intended to copy what happens in football, where the Charity Shield is the game that is usually played a week before the league season begins.
Of course we have had a Charity Shield in the past in rugby league.
It was played prior to the summer era, from 1985 to 1995 on nine separate occasions.
The first four games were played in the Isle of Man, where the size of the attendance varied from 3,276 for Halifax and Castleford in 1986 to 5,044 for Widnes versus Wigan in 1988.
The following year the same two teams played the Charity Shield at Liverpool FC’s Anfield stadium and it attracted 17,263.
In 1990 Widnes and Wigan contested it again, this time at Swansea City’s old Vetch Field stadium, where 11,178 attended.
The following two years it was played at Gateshead and drew 10,248 to see Wigan play Hull in 1991 and 7,364 for St Helens v Wigan in 1992.
There were then two years when it wasn’t played, before the final throw of the dice was in 1995, when Wigan and Leeds attracted a crowd of 5,716 to the Royal Showground in Dublin.
And that was the end of the Charity Shield. It could hardly be described as a raging success, in contrast to the World Club Challenge.
It was a failure because rugby league fans understand that our sport is only really viable when it is played between two sides with something important at stake. It doesn’t work as an exhibition sport.
Let’s contrast the Charity Shield with the World Club Challenge, which is supposed to decide on the best team in the world, bringing together the best of Super League against the best of the NRL.
There is a tremendous amount at stake and that is why Hull KR were able to sell 24,600 tickets within three days for their clash with the Broncos and it’s why Wigan were able to sell out their clash with Penrith in 2024.
The World Club Challenge has meaning in a way that a Charity Shield game doesn’t.
Interestingly enough, the World Club Challenge only gets a sidewards mention in the Strategic Review.
Recommendation 134 says: “There should be annual matches between the best NRL and Super League clubs. These should be standalone assets and played around the world.”
That, I’m afraid, is far too woolly.
What actually needs to happen is that the World Club Challenge needs to be elevated in status in both hemispheres so that it occupies a set date, ensuring that it will be played every year, perhaps at a neutral venue. What we can’t have is the World Club Challenge being played in some years but not others, for example in 2025, when Wigan and Penrith couldn’t arrange a mutually convenient time because Penrith were heading for Las Vegas.
Given that the NRL will continue to play games in Las Vegas on the first weekend in March, the obvious time for the World Club Challenge is two weeks before then, in the middle of February. This year, if the game were to be played on a Saturday, that would have been on 14th February.
By doing that, we could ensure that any NRL or Super League club could compete in the World Club Challenge as well as playing in Vegas, if it had been selected for that event. So Penrith not competing in 2025 wouldn’t be repeated.
Of course the Vegas games are the opening matches in the NRL season and I would like to see the same thing apply to the games there between the Super League teams. I would suggest expanding Super League’s participation to four clubs.
It would mean adjusting and slightly shortening our season, but it would surely start with a bang.
And to create events that go off with a huge bang should be the RFL’s major strategic objective.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 518 (March 2026)