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The World Club Series isn't the Champions League, it's the Amco Cup

23rd February, 2015
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The Bunnies' 2014 win was one of rugby league's great moments. (AAP Image/Paul Miller)
Expert
23rd February, 2015
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As a pundit, one has to be careful in reaching sweeping hypotheses from the results of sporting events.

Teams with every external advantage can quite often be defeated by those with no money, no players and no fans. Likewise, scorelines can often be reflective of nothing more than a bunch of individuals who had an off day playing a group who reached great heights.

Yet we’re nonetheless in the business of trying to interpret a bunch of random facts.

Which brings us to the World Club Series. Did the weekend’s matches flatter to deceive in relation to the relative strengths of Super League and the NRL?

And, more importantly, which games flattered to deceive? The ones where the Super League teams came close, or where South Sydney crushed St Helens?

If we first accept that the games did say something about the relative strengths of the competitions, then the answer to the second question should be straightforward.

The Super League sides who took part – St Helens, Wigan and Warrington – were the top three from the previous season. Conversely, St George Illawarra and Brisbane travelled to the UK by virtue of them being popular brands and their CEOs being keen on the idea.

So, the balance of probability dictates that the actual World Club Challenge – the one Souths won 39-0 – was a more reliable barometer of the difference between the leagues.

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The fact that lower-ranked NRL clubs edged past top Super League teams would only serve to support the idea that there is still quite a gulf.

In truth, the World Club Series and Challenge have a built-in self destruct mechanism – the growing gulf in the salary caps of the two comps. The NRL cap is already toughly twice that of Super League’s and with the next Australian TV deal likely to be be $2 billion, the gulf is going to grow.

The popular narrative is that the WCS is a precursor of soccer’s Champions League or UEFA Cup.

But given that one of the only two full-time professional competitions in the world is in the process of picking the eyes out of the other, perhaps the WCS is actually the Amco/KB/Tooth Cup of its day

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the likes of Combined Brisbane, Illawarra Division, Monaro, Newcastle Division, Auckland and others played in a knockout comp against the Sydney clubs.

It was seen as an exciting clash of styles and histories in an era in which all players – including some of the biggest names in the game’s history – were part-timers. Famously, Western Division actually won the first Amco Cup.

The provincial sides were inherently at a disadvantage financially, featuring players who would either go on to play in the big league or were on the way out to pasture having done so earlier in their careers.

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Sound familiar?

Super League clubs need more World Club Series to raise enough money to field teams which can compete in the World Club Series. It’s a circular argument which makes no sense.

After getting a taste of top company, Illawarra, Newcastle, Brisbane, Auckland and the rest marshalled their resources with the help of local businessmen and entered teams in the Sydney competition, which then ceased to be the Sydney competition.

Before the World Club Series I was sceptical about the idea of the NRL becoming rugby league’s global brand. Having seen the impact of Russell Crowe and Sam Burgess on the Langtree Park fans who were clamouring for photos and autographs on Sunday night, I am now almost completely sold on it.

We need to take the NRL, as represented by Russell in this example, to the north of England and beyond, in order to fight off the globalisation of other sports, as represented by rugby union defector Burgess.

The evolution of professional sporting competitions has been suburban to regional to national to international over a long period. Yet people seem to think this evolution will somehow cease.

Going to Brisbane on a plane was a big deal for Sydney clubs in the seventies – roughly as rare as going to England is for NRL teams today.

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Four top English clubs in a conference-based NRL will happen eventually whether or not I wrote this column and whether or not you read it.

One day I might write an equivalent of Ian Heads’ The Night The Music Died (about Western Division in 74) about what I saw at the weekend.

I’ll call it The Day Russell Came To St Helens.

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