In the latest issue of Rugby League World magazine, Michael O’Hare asks where does international rugby league go from here?
To lose one world cup may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness. Or sheer bloody incompetence, as Lady Bracknell never said.
Doubtless Oscar Wilde might have had something pithy to say about the state of international rugby league had he been around in 2023. The 2025 World Cup cancelled (twice), the 2023 European Championships cancelled (or at least postponed) in its wake, along with American and African RLWC qualifiers. There’s indifference towards international league in the major power base of the southern hemisphere, and dwindling opposition for the major power base in the northern hemisphere.
And all this on the back of 2022’s three World Cups which delivered fabulous entertainment and attracted great free-to-air viewing figures. How has that momentum dissipated so rapidly? Maybe because it always does. Where there’s no will, there’s no way, to mangle a cliché. Why, time and again, does rugby league always squander any brief window of opportunity? No, let’s be frank here. Why, time and again, do we always screw it up?
A World Cup in France would have delivered incalculable benefits for our beleaguered sport in that country. A cancelled world cup, the polar opposite. Worse than not having one in the first place. What does this look like to a casual (or even serious) observer? Rugby league across the channel is in desperate need of positive headlines. Instead, it’s now an object of ridicule or, even worse, pity.
Lest we forget, this is not the first 2025 World Cup that has gone astray. North America’s also crashed and burned on the pyre of commercial frailty and ambiguous promises.
So let’s not pull any punches. Let’s be brutal. Who the hell made the decision to award tournaments to two entities without cast-iron, legally binding, assurances that at least one of them would actually deliver? It smacks of total and utter ineptitude. A cross-fingers and hope approach. Does any of us reading this think for one second that this year’s rugby union world cup in France will not take place, or football’s European championship in Germany in 2024, or next year’s Olympic games?
And why does the loss of two world cups smack of ineptitude? Because it is ineptitude, that’s why. Deny it in these pages those who wrought it.
Doubtless some will point out that rugby union is having similar issues, pointing to the demise of Worcester, Wasps and, it seems, London Irish. But this isn’t a competition in schadenfreude – anyway, look at the vibrancy (and full stadiums) of union’s international programme. We should be envious not smug.
Without an international dimension, a strong international dimension, rugby league will wither. It will never die, too many of us love it, but it will be forced ever more into its backwaters and into irrelevance, if it isn’t already. That might not concern fans of the club game in both hemispheres, even a majority, but it is plain and simple fact.
International sport attracts audiences (in stadiums and on screen). The 2022 World Cup was all over the BBC at the end of last year. On the back of England’s wheelchair victory the game figured prominently on Sports Personality of the Year. At the end of 2022 the nation knew about rugby league. Seven months on, yeah, whatever.
So what do we do? Where on earth do we start? When we see France suffering two 64-point defeats to England? When we see pretty much total apathy towards international rugby league from the Australian authorities – and the New Zealand RL pretty much in hock to their NRL paymasters? When we see the parlous state of the once-powerful likes of Wales with players, understandably, happy to take the greater rewards on offer from rugby union?
And it runs deeper, to our own inertia. Why, when we hold a World Cup in England, does the national team only play its first follow-up game six months later? Why was there no incoming tour until we could strike a welcome but ad hoc deal to play Tonga one year after the tournament finished?
Why are international fixtures seemingly sketched out on the hoof? You can guarantee that the men’s and women’s football, rugby union, cricket, hockey, badminton, curling – need I go on? – teams know their international calendars years into the future.
Where do we start to fix this mess? Well we look to the phenomenal growth and passion for the game around the Pacific, and the fact that in the lifetimes of most people reading this, rugby league was only played in four countries. Now there are teams – and dedicated people – in countries as diverse as Serbia, the USA (2025 world cup notwithstanding), Germany, Italy… countries right across Europe and South America with big populations. We look to the rapid rise in women’s and wheelchair rugby league, and we look to our youth.
Then we start to take international rugby league seriously for the sake of our very existence. We have a properly funded International Rugby League association. And when it makes decisions, it knows (not hopes) they won’t be dust on the changing room floor six months later.
One imperative, an absolute imperative, for the immediate future, is to make sure there is a World Cup in 2025 for the sake of our very credibility. My gut feeling is this won’t happen. But it should, and not some slimmed down Pacific nations plus England affair in Sydney. The World Cup must be the pinnacle of our sport not some optional codicil. No kowtowing to narrow-minded, parochial interests. We had to postpone the last tournament because of the inordinate power the clubs down-under wield.
And for the future? Emerging nations world cups have been an afterthought (international rugby league itself is an afterthought if we are being merciless here). They shouldn’t be. Rugby League should be clamouring for inclusion in the Olympic and Commonwealth Games. We need three test-series between England, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific nations. And tours between nations of similar ability, locked in. Why was the Four Nations discarded? It, alongside an associated qualifying tournament, was a great vehicle for introducing developing countries to the highest level of rugby league.
And there must be targeted help for nations like France (if they are not already lost to us – it’s that bad). Putting Catalans or Toulouse into Super League simply doesn’t cut it, especially post-Brexit. And we haven’t even touched on the immeasurable loss and damage of the failed Canadian ventures.
And we’ve said it before but we’ll say it again, rugby league – especially international rugby league – must be on free-to-air television. Subscription TV, by its very nature because it is exclusive, only delivers diminishing audiences. Even Sky TV would acknowledge that the Channel 4 coverage is a means of enticing audiences to their subscription model.
Readers will be correct in pointing out that this is easy to say, easy to rant about, but how do we do this stuff? How do we fund it? The answer is if we don’t then soon enough there’ll be nothing to fund. Right now this is a merely a broadside from a keyboard warrior with no plan, no endorsement for an agenda which doesn’t even exist. But squander the international game and in 20, 30 years – who knows? – more people than ever will think there is only one form of rugby. And it won’t be league. It’s a perhaps cruel truism. But it’s true nonetheless. And it needs pointing out. Ad infinitum.
Over the next few issues Rugby League World – a champion of the international game since its Open Rugby days of the 1970s – will be attempting to address this biggest of dilemmas. This outpouring of concern, pleading and vague hope is just the beginning of what everyone here hopes will be the revitalisation and re-emergence of international rugby league.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 486 (July 2023)
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