ANZAC Test: Australia v New Zealand Match Thread

[back to the future]

Lip service, then they'll bang on about Origin.

Agree but the origin trial city v country had no real standouts,good game but pretty poor defence

[Futtocks]

Corey Parker tubbyboohooing over that mean big bully Martin Taupau's gesture. Meanwhile, the guilty party is in line for a ban for the choke-hold that started it.

[Jim from Oz]

Good news (as I've posted elsewhere):

 

 

Why Australian Kangaroos may be ranked the No.2 rugby league nation for a long time

Hard to handle: Kiwis centre Shaun Kenny-Dowall runs the ball during the Trans-Tasman Test win over the Australia Kangaroos at Suncorp Stadium. Photo: Getty Images

New Zealand's rise to become rugby league's No.1 nation has been a journey more than 10 years in the making and one that must surely now have members of the Australian camp questioning the decision not to play another Test for 12 months.

Although it won't be confirmed until the next round of Rugby League International Federation rankings are released whether the Kiwis' 26-12 triumph was enough to officially claim top spot yet, the fact they have a three-Test series against England at the end of the year while the Kangaroos players are enduring pre-season training means it is totally out of Australian hands.

Depending on the results of that series, Australia may require four consecutive wins over New Zealand to regain top billing. A proposed Great Britain tour at the end of the season, which would have included mid-week matches against teams such as Country and Polynesian All Stars as well as Tests against Australia and New Zealand, was rejected due to concerns about player workload after the 2013 World Cup and last year's Four Nations.

• Instead, the Kiwis will tour England to play Tests at the Olympic Stadium in London, Wigan's DW Stadium and Hull's KC Stadium, as well as a match against Leeds at Headingley.

The greatest pity of such a decision is that the Kangaroos will not play an end of season Test for the first time since 1993 at a time when fans are showing a growing interest in the international game.

The Test in Brisbane on Sunday was watched by the biggest capital city audience for any football code this year, with 939,000 viewers tuning into the coverage on Nine and Gem, comprising of 541,000 in Sydney, 319,000 in Brisbane, 60,000 in Melbourne and 19,000 in Perth.

In comparison, the Collingwood-Essendon AFL match on Anzac Day was watched by 758 691 viewers in the five capital cities, while the biggest NRL audiences were for the Rabbitohs-Broncos (729,000) and Roosters-Broncos (691,000).

In addition to the Australian television audience for Sunday's Test, there were another 272,000 viewers watching in New Zealand on Sky Sports and 34,000 who tuned into the free-to-air replay on Maori TV.

According to the Rugby League Ratings twitter account, the Kangaroos are the second-highest rating national sporting team on free-to-air television in the past six months, behind the cricket team.

It is a contrast to the reaction when the Kiwis ended Australia's 27-year international domination with a crushing 24-0 defeat of the Kangaroos in the final of the 2005 Tri-Nations.

This reporter still recalls receiving a flood of texts from overjoyed New Zealand friends and colleagues as fulltime neared at a frozen Elland Road in Leeds, and none from disappointed Australians as few had bothered getting out of bed to watch in the belief the Kangaroos would win again.

Since then, the Kiwis have suffered a golden point defeat in the 2006 Tri-Nations final and won the deciding match of the 2008 World Cup and the 2010 and 2014 Four Nations tournaments.

The growing strength of the Kiwis has undoubtedly come on the back of the Warriors admission to the NRL in 1995 and their success supports the case for a second New Zealand franchise as that is likely to help develop more players for the Pacific nations.

 While Stephen Kearney deserves much of the praise for the consistency with which New Zealand is now playing at Test level, credit should also go to former coaches such as Brian McLennan and Frank Endacott for their role in identifying and providing opportunities for young Kiwi players. 

However, it wasn't until New Zealand's historic third consecutive defeat of the Kangaroos and the comprehensive nature of their win that anyone could declare there had been a change at the top of rugby league's world order for the first time since Australia last lost a Test series to Great Britain in 1970.

Should the Kiwis win all three Tests against England later this year it could be a long time before the Kangaroos get the opportunity to reclaim the No.1 mantle that they and most fans had until now taken for granted.

[Scubby]

All international football needs to be sold separately in Australia and NZ. Make the winning network put some effort into promoting it.

[deluded pom?]

All international football needs to be sold separately in Australia and NZ. Make the winning network put some effort into promoting it.

All televised international football should be sold by the RLIF and the profits generated pumped back into the international game.

[roughyedspud]

tournaments should be sold by the RLIF i agree....but tours should be for the national governing bodies to sell..

 

 

thats the trade off thats been agreed thats gonna see the end of the 4nations after 2016....the RLIF is gonna get tv rights from a big comp every 2 years..the world cup & federation cup...with "tour" years inbetween...so its gonna look like this,for the big 3 at least

 

world cup

tours  ( and federation cup qualifiers for 2nd tier nations)

federation cup

tour  ( and world cup qualifiers for 2nd tier nations)

world cup

 

 

or something like that?

[GeordieSaint]

thats the trade off thats been agreed thats gonna see the end of the 4nations after 2016....the RLIF is gonna get tv rights from a big comp every 2 years..the world cup & federation cup...with "tour" years inbetween...so its gonna look like this,for the big 3 at least

 

world cup

tours  ( and federation cup qualifiers for 2nd tier nations)

federation cup

tour  ( and world cup qualifiers for 2nd tier nations)

world cup

 

 

or something like that?

 

I wish we'd stop using the phrase 2nd tier nations.