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Wayne Bennett has won seven premierships and five State Of Origin series – but ending England and Great Britain’s 49-year World Cup drought would be the greatest achievement of his career.
Forty-nine years. In 2021, when the next World Cup is hosted in England, rugby league will have been around for 126 years. England and Great Britain have not beaten Australia in a series or lifted a World Cup for 40 per cent of the entire history of the sport.
Bennett himself was just 13 when Mike Stephenson hoisted the trophy aloft in France.
It’s a run of outs that, by 2021, will have dwarfed the South Sydney gap between premierships – we’re talking almost America’s Cup proportions.
Which brings us to the Rugby League International Federation Congress in York this week. Reportedly, the Australian delegation of Peter Beattie and Todd Greenberg still want to scupper next year’s Great Britain Lions tour and invite themselves and their team to the UK instead.
Beattie is a bit late on the scene and may not have been aware that Great Britain were already forced to stay home in 2015 when the Aussies refused to play them, citing the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
The Kiwis hurriedly organised a tour of England instead, meaning France had to cancel a tour of New Zealand.
Under no circumstances should this be allowed to happen again. The NRL reportedly gets no extra TV money from hosting traditional Test series or one-off matches – only from tournaments. So they don’t like hosting internationals in Spring.
The 2017 World Cup made only roughly $6.8 million, despite David Smith promising $12 million to keep a $10 million South African bid off the table.
Photo: 2017 Rugby League World Cup, Scott Davis
But the Great Britain tour has been gazetted for at least 18 months and has been widely known within the game for even longer. If the Aussies don’t want to play them, fair enough.
The other thing is: the 2021 World Cup needs the Aussies dropping by in 2020 to spark interest and stoke the fires of sponsors, fans, broadcasters and the media generally.
England Knights just went all the way to Brisbane to prepare for two internationals in Papua New Guinea. Clearly, the RFL has the funds to got to PNG, New Zealand, Samoa, Fiji and Tonga and ignore Australia completely – and that’s exactly what they’re preparing to do.
The interesting thing is whether they will play in Australia against non-Australian opposition.
Fish where the fish are, right? There are lots of rugby league fans in Australia. Earlier this year, Wigan and Hull invaded Australian turf and took a slice of that market. Perhaps the Lions could play Lebanon at Belmore.
Last month we saw the NZRL object to Australia taking on Tonga in Auckland a week after they played the Aussies there. The fears were well justified given the gulf in the crowd figures.
Would the NRL allow one team of NRL players to play another team of NRL players in Sydney without them getting a cut?
Whatever argument they used with the Kiwis should surely be now used against them.