PERHAPS the most surprising scoreline of the World Cup competition so far was Saturday’s 64-6 victory for Samoa against Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby.
I had been expecting a much closer game and I even harboured hopes that the Kumuls might spring a shock and earn a victory against the Samoans, which would then raise England’s hopes of making the semi-finals.
And when they took an early lead, those hopes rose sharply, only to be dashed as the game unfolded.
The amazing thing at the weekend was the combination of one-sided matches in the World Cup with some very good attendances, which were far greater than for previous World Cups in Australia.
Of course that reflects the rise in the South Pacific teams to be playing at the same level as Australia and New Zealand.
England and New Zealand both scored 82 points, while the Samoans scored 64 and Tonga defeated Lebanon by 36 points.
The only close game in the second round of matches was the clash between Australia and Fiji in Brisbane, which the Aussies only won by a 14-point margin, when they have beaten Fiji much more convincingly in previous World Cups.
But there were full houses for the games in Port Moresby and Christchurch, while the Australians attracted more than 41,000 to the game in Brisbane and Tonga and Lebanon drew a crowd of more than 25,000 to their game at CommBank Stadium on Friday night.
The only possibly disappointing attendance was the figure of 13,087 for the England v France clash in Perth on Saturday, which was more than 5,000 down on the match the previous week against Tonga, no doubt reflecting the large number of Tongan fans who had travelled to Perth to witness the start of their World Cup campaign.
In previous editions of League Express I’ve been critical of the low-key nature of the promotion of the World Cup in Australia, but since the NRL Grand Final the encouraging thing has been how much the host broadcaster Channel 7 has consistently promoted its coverage of the competition and that promotion has clearly persuaded more people to buy tickets.
And that is despite the fact that many supporters probably realised that they would be watching one-sided matches in many cases.
The fact is that the fans have taken relatively kindly to those one-sided games, seeing them as events worth attending, rather than being too bothered about the results.
But the question dominating the World Cup as we head towards the third week of competition is whether England can score the points they need (68 or more) on Friday against PNG while Samoa are kind enough to lose to Tonga on Sunday.
It’s hard to imagine it happening, but it’s our only hope.
