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It’s so exciting: Rugby League World Cup time! Can you believe it’s only been however many years it’s been since the last one?
Approximately between three and five years passes so quickly in the heady world of international rugby league.
The Rugby League World Cup has provided us with so many memorable moments over the years.
Like the time Billy Slater stuffed up, and that try that I think got scored once.
And remember that time when a country where nobody plays rugby league cobbled together a team of second-tier professionals with tenuous links to the country in question and was humiliatingly thrashed by one of the only three teams that actually take the sport seriously?
You’ll probably remember that one in particular – it’s happened about a hundred times.
Let’s not be too harsh on rugby league’s really rather adorable efforts to be an international powerhouse.
After all, by splitting Great Britain into England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the authorities have managed to take what is usually a single league power and turn it into a single league power, another team that looks sort of like it could do OK, and Scotland and Ireland.
That really bolsters the ranks.
And by giving a stage on which the Pacific island nations can strut their stuff, the RLWC really provides an excellent way to keep New Zealanders who aren’t good enough to play for New Zealand off the streets.
And let’s not forget, naysayers, that those who claim that all the teams outside the Big Three are just pointless padding have already taken a body blow in Italy’s defeat of England in a warm-up game.
Although let’s also not forget that those who claim that any of the teams outside the Big Three have any credibility as actual representatives of the sport in their home country have also taken a body blow in the fact that the Italian team contains not only the Minichiello brothers, but Kade Snowden and Paul Vaughan, and if he weren’t injured, would include Craig Gower.
It’s heartwarming to see that Chris Centrone of the North Sydney Bears, and Ben Falcone of the Souths Logan Magpies, have also won their Italian caps: any tournament in which finely-honed, supremely talented millionaire super-athletes get to compete against part-time amateurs from minor suburban leagues is one guaranteed to be not only fiercely-fought, but hilarious.
Other notable warm-up results have been New Zealand’s 50-point victory over the Cook Islands, which under any reasonably-formulated handicap system must surely count as a 70-point victory to the Cook Islands; and the USA’s victory over France.
This may be the most incomprehensible result in sporting history. I have no idea what I’m supposed to think about the sentence “America just beat France at rugby league”: it’s like hearing that Angola just lost to Taipei in a standing bear-toss; there’s just no way to process it.
And that’s the problem with the Rugby League World Cup: its main purpose seems to be to produce news reports that read like a random word generator.
Admittedly, league is one step ahead in the global domination stakes of the AFL, which is so hard-up it is now trying to convince the media that sending a squad on a pub crawl in Dublin counts as a world championship.
But this still leaves the RLWC lagging behind genuine world games like soccer, rugby union, basketball, netball, cricket, hockey, ice hockey, baseball, softball, tennis, European handball, table tennis, touch football, indoor cricket, curling, and mock trial.
Which is not to say there is no value in international rugby league competition at all.
In fact, in recent years the rivalry between Australian, England and New Zealand has become ever more ferocious, and with New Zealand actually holding the title (I know right? I’d forgotten too), and England now possessing somewhere between two and fifteen Burgess brothers, this year’s should be a cracker.
It’s just an arguable matter as to whether preceding the competition for world supremacy with some vicious ritualistic floggings of hapless Frenchmen and bewildered weekenders from Wentworthville and Tuggeranong representing countries there seems a reasonable chance they’ve never even visited is a worthwhile expenditure of anyone’s time.
The true nature of the tournament is fairly well symbolised by the fact that three of the four teams in groups A and B qualify for the quarter-finals, while one out of three in groups C and D go through.
It’s like even the organisers can’t be bothered pretending it’s a real world cup.
But look, let’s enjoy the pageantry and fun, and cheer our country on, unless our country is Fiji or Scotland, in which case really, save yourself the grief.
We don’t get a football World Cup until next year, so we may as well bask in whatever we can get for now.
And if nothing else, it’ll really make the Commonwealth Games seem like life-or-death.