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Even in England’s north-west, where the face of soon to be dual Warriors fullback Sam Tomkins roars from a council billboard saying “Believe In Wigan”, rugby league is accustomed to playing second fiddle.
The legendary Warriors may be the team that Australians automatically associate with Wigan, but association football’s Wigan Athletic are minnows no more – notwithstanding the fact that they’re currently plying their trade in the second tier Championship after an all-too-brief flirtation with the Premier League.
If you can ignore the frosty conditions – not easy for someone who was swimming at Bondi eight days earlier – it’s not all doom and gloom for Wigan football fans.
Earlier this year, the Latics upset top-flight glamour club Manchester City 1-0 with a stoppage time goal in the 2012/13 FA Cup Final.
And though Tomkins is the star attraction in the town square after the Warriors added yet another Super League trophy to the cabinet this year, it’s a photo of Latics club boss Dave Whelan carrying the FA Cup around Wembley that takes pride of place in the city centre’s DW Sports Store.
Unlike London’s Lillywhites, rugby league at least gets a look-in here, with jerseys and training kit for the Rugby League World Cup’s ‘big three’ on sale.
Still, support for the Wigan Warriors doesn’t run as deep as you’d think, as I discover while ingesting a local delicacy/dietician’s nightmare of battered cod, chunky chips and mushy peas outside DW Stadium.
A middle-aged couple join me at Sharpy’s Fish and Chip Restaurant, an hour or so before before their beloved Latics go down 2-1 to Belgium’s Zulte Waregem in a critical Europa League clash.
They’re more familiar with Tomkins’ union playing younger brother Joel than the rugby league superstar, though they at least watched England’s soul-crushing, awe-inspiring 20-18 RLWC semi-final loss to the Kiwis at Wembley the previous weekend.
They’re politely ambivalent to rugby league, yes, but aware of its existence nonetheless.
Just down the road at the Museum of Liverpool, with its loving tributes to the reds of Liverpool FC and the blues of Everton and the many and varied strips of the Tranmere Rovers, rugby league is placed even further on the sidelines.
An aerial map of the sporting teams of the region spotlights football clubs and rugby clubs, tennis clubs and golf clubs…and then St Helens Rugby League Football Club, sitting out on its lonesome on the eastern fringes.
As rain tumbles down on the uprights and crossbars that dot the landscape between Liverpool and Manchester, you have to wonder why anyone in England bothers with outdoor sports at all given throwing darts is a viable career option here.
In Manchester, at least, the RLWC 2013 decider at Old Trafford is on the radar, if only a blip.
It doesn’t help that the English team fell 21 seconds short of a shot at glory last weekend, or that Manchester United, the stadium’s main tenants, and their crosstown City rivals both dished out smashings in their respective Champions League matches on Wednesday.
But there they are. Nine pages into the sport section of the Manchester Evening Post, Kangaroos skipper Cameron Smith and Kiwis captain Simon Mannering are standing either side of a trophy that spent some of its life in a roadside ditch, anonymous, before being rescued and reconditioned to its previous shiny glory.
If that trophy’s life story isn’t symbolic of rugby league’s turbulent history, nothing ever will be.
This sort of story is just another day at the office for a sport that’s like a punch drunk boxer who keeps climbing back into the ring against far stronger opponents, occasionally jagging an unlikely win to keep the dream alive.
A small, succulent fish in a big global pond that does most of its leaping out of the water at two opposite arse-ends of the world, occasionally being caught and served up to the public with chips and mushy peas.
A minnow of a sport whose ‘meaningless’ ‘farce’ of a tournament’s finale will today fill one of the world’s most iconic stadiums.
A red rag to a bull of journalists and rival code followers alike.
The greatest game of all. That’s league.
Follow Kris on Twitter @KrisSwales
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