“APRIL is the cruellest month,” wrote the poet T S Eliot in his great work The Waste Land.
I would suggest that any poet looking for a subject in 2026 might begin his poem with: “Rugby League is the cruellest game.”
That thought struck me watching Leeds Rhinos hammer Hull KR at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas at midnight our time on Saturday night.
Only nine days earlier Hull KR, their players, officials and supporters had scaled the heights of glory, defeating Brisbane Broncos 30-24 to win the World Club Challenge in a thrilling encounter.
To be brought so solidly down to earth from such a great height was cruel indeed.
It made the rollercoasters of Las Vegas seem tame by comparison.
Willie Peter refused to look for excuses that would explain the dramatic change in fortune.
But there must be reasons why it happened and it is important for the club, and for the RFL for that matter, to get to the bottom of them.
I believe that to play in the World Club Challenge and then to travel across the Atlantic so soon afterwards to play a game in a completely different time zone is too much to ask.
It is notable that Penrith refused to play the World Club Challenge against Wigan in 2025, because of the limited time period that would have elapsed before they were due to play in Las Vegas.
It’s notable that the four NRL clubs that played in Vegas all had a gap of two weeks since their last game and they will have a gap of two weeks before their next game.
And they were playing in a time zone that was actually more closely aligned to Australian eastern seaboard time.
Hull KR, on the other hand, have to come back to England and play a game next Sunday, as have Leeds.
I think we are expecting too much of our leading players.
Of course we can make the argument that Leeds didn’t seem to have a problem in playing well in Vegas, especially with Maiko Sivo on the wing, who was the undoubted star of the Vegas Rugby League show over the weekend, with memories recalled of the great Lesley Vainikolo when he was in his pomp.
But the Rhinos’ last game before heading to Vegas was against York. It wasn’t such a high-profile game as the World Club Challenge.
Meanwhile, what is the future of the Vegas weekend?
NRL Chairman Peter V’landys is in no doubt that it will continue, presumably in its present form, while he is also ambitious to explore other major venues, including London for the opening weekend of the NRL.
Apparently the NRL is confident it has made a profit from this years’ Vegas extravaganza, which I’m told derives to a considerable degree from the fact that the Aussie governing body took control of and profited from the travelling packages to Vegas.
How much of that profit comes back to the British game?
Given that we took at least a quarter of the spectators, I think it’s time the deal was renegotiated on more favourable terms.
Meanwhile, in the March edition of Rugby League World magazine, I put forward a suggestion for how the World Club Challenge and the Vegas weekend could both be managed to ensure that both would take place every year.