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Australia thrashing New Zealand in the World Cup final. Good or bad for international rugby league?
It’s the sort of question that is inevitably asked in the wake of a tournament like this, but is such a question really relevant?
I mean, we knew before the World Cup began that Australia would most likely win it, and that the team they would beat in the final would most likely be New Zealand.
The only other team with any chance of upsetting the status quo was England.
Plenty of people got excited about the semi-final between the Kiwis and the Poms because it was a great game, but all the result of that game told me was that the Aussies had the final won.
New Zealand needed a stunning late try from Shaun Johnson to beat England, who had been shown to be well short of Australia back in the opening game of the tournament.
And that form held true in the final, with the Aussies winning 34-2. A bigger margin than anyone expected, but on form it would have been a surprise had the Aussies not at least won comfortably.
I think Australia had two big advantages in this World Cup.
One, they didn’t play New Zealand in the group stage. And, two, the Kiwis didn’t have Wayne Bennett to help coach Stephen Kearney this time around.
You will recall Bennett was in the Kiwis’ camp throughout the 2008 World Cup, and that it was plain at the time that his influence had been major.
Kearney failed as an NRL club coach with Parramatta, and at the World Cup just gone he had to do it on his own, without the assistance of the seven-time premiership-winning master coach.
He couldn’t get the Kiwis to compete with the Aussies in the final, after his team had barely made it to the decider in the first place.
Also in the 2008 World Cup, New Zealand was in the same group as Australia and England.
Australia thrashed the Kiwis 30-6 in the group stage, and recent history shows that in events like that and Four Nations tournaments the Aussies can become vulnerable if they meet the Kiwis in the final after beating them in the group stage.
The Kiwis are great at getting themselves up for a final, and they beat the Aussies 34-20 in the 2008 World Cup decider.
But this time around there was no chance of the Aussies either underestimating the Kiwis or being ambushed by a suddenly much more intense Kiwis side than in the group stage.
The lasting memory the Aussies had of the Kiwis throughout this event was of that loss in the 2008 final. They were able to focus on that, and I’m sure it helped enormously in getting them as ready as they were ever going to be when they finally came up against the Kiwis this time.
So in terms of international rugby league, the result of the final doesn’t really change much, although it will presumably put Kearney under pressure to hold his job.
That could be a good thing for the Kiwis.
In terms of international rugby league on a wider scale, was the event good for that?
I’m sure it’s done more good than bad.
At five weeks, the World Cup is too long. The depth of international rugby league simply doesn’t justify that length when you are headed towards an inevitable conclusion in which there are only three genuine winning chances.
Three or four weeks is long enough.
And, obviously, a lot of “manufacturing” is allowed to go into the formation of some of the so-called minnow teams, to make them as competitive as possible.
But that is understandable when you are trying to grow the game internationally.
I don’t know if they will ever get international rugby league to grow to a level where the outcome of a World Cup becomes anything less than predictable.
It looks a hell of a long way off, but I’m not going to boo them for trying.
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