Kangaroos facing toughest RLWC semi finals challenge since 1995

[UTK]

10 hours ago, stookie said:

What?!? The early-mid 2010's were a mini golden age for international rugby league.

Yeah I think people are trying to claim nothing changed because it doesn't suit the narrative that competitiveness of other nations is irrelevant to how the Australian Public receives Internationals. 

In the mid-late 2000s the Kiwis were getting regularly destroyed by Australia to the point of multiple 50+ scores being put on them in a few years, things started to drop off here. Then you get to 2008 and the Kiwis do the unthinkable but less than 6 months later they get belted again 38-10 in front of a big crowd in Brisbane. Nonetheless over the next few years in the early 2010s Kangaroos games managed to pack out stadiums all across the country - Newcastle, Canberra, Melbourne, the Gold Coast and Townsville while also getting very good crowds across the ditch at Eden Park, NZ's solitary win during that time was the 2010 4N final while they still recorded the occasional big defeat such as 42-6 in Newcastle this was a much better period than 2000s.

The 2014 4N started with a bang and a NZ win by packing out Brisbane, this was the start of a 3 win streak by NZ which led to a packed Newcastle and Soldout Perth in subsequent matches, both of which relatively convincing wins for Australia. Australia then had a small dominant period of NZ including a 34-8 win in the 2016 4N final, this was followed up by a poor crowd and another uncompetitive game in Canberra in the 2017 Anzac test. This led into the 2017 WC which saw some fairly poor attendances for an extremely dominant Australian side at the time, to be fair though we didn't play NZ during this tournament so we didn't have our biggest drawing nation as a fixture (England haven't drawn a crowd in Aus for years now - again due to no competition). We've only played once in Aus since then - in Wollongong with 18k in attendance, this is only 1k short of the record at the ground but tbf if should probably be considered poor given the capacity is 22k.

All this really is the reason why the Oceanic Cup is so crucial for rebuilding the profile of Internationals in AUS/NZ, competitive games every single year held in every nation within the region allows us to build a consistent schedule to entice fans. None of this rotating 4N so the likes of Tonga/Samoa/PNG/Fiji miss out on games against AUS/NZ every couple of years and we only get 1-2 tests a year in the region as AUS/NZ head north. Exactly the sort of thing that kills momentum and reduces opportunities for the developing nations to test themselves against the best.