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ROCHDALE – If you’ve enjoyed this World Cup, you might be hoping for more international rugby league in the pipeline. I’m sorry to tell you that you might be disappointed, for a while at least.
Neither Samoa nor Australia, nor the Jillaroos or the Kiwi Ferns, have a match scheduled beyond this weekend due to the lack of an international calendar.
Rugby League has no Future Tours Programme, like the one cricket has to let everyone know who they’re scheduled to play and none of the elite teams need to play qualifiers for the next World Cup (all quarter-finalists qualify automatically), like FIFA does the second that their competitions end.
There’s not even a continental championship, like the European Cup or Pacific Cup, because International Rugby League is unable to release their calendar.
The IRL officials have got one done, written, ready – just waiting for approval from members. All the members are ready – except one. Care to guess which?
The reasoning is the same thing it usually is, namely the major players in international footy are beholden to the most major player before they can do anything.
It’s a problem that speaks to the unequal dynamics in the Southern Hemisphere and the afterthought that international rugby league can take there, especially when it comes to who gets to make money out of it.
The situation is pretty simple: the NRL is yet to agree on a Collective Bargaining Agreement with its own players – who are, of course, also the players who would play international games – and thus it has no idea of salary caps, insurance, scheduling or really anything else for next year.
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That means everyone else who requires those sorts of things to plan their own events is currently twiddling their thumbs and waiting.
To be clear, there’s no real issue with the NRL or the Rugby League Players’ Association getting into a stoush about pay, as is their prerogative as a league and a trade union.
(Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images for RLWC)
But it is a particularly annoying time for it to happen, given the success of this World Cup, given the clear public demand for more international games and given the necessity of planning forwards to make them possible.
The IRL has been promising an international calendar for months now, with the hope that it might have been announced at some point during this tournament.
Instead, the ongoing pay dispute means it hasn’t got a clue when and under what conditions talent based in the NRL (and the NRLW, for that matter) will be available for fixtures. The IRL is waiting for the NRL just like everyone else.
They could just unilaterally schedule games, of course, but the spirit of cooperation is there and they know that keeping the Australians on side is vital. There’s no point adding a third party to the argument, either. So the IRL waits.
At this stage, it’s traditional to blame the NRL and their member clubs for being out-of-touch boomers who care more about Leagues Club revenue and when they can hold pre-season trials than if Samoa play Tonga ever again.
(Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images)
That characterisation isn’t completely true, but it’s not based on nothing either. NRL club bosses would probably cancel Origin tomorrow if it didn’t make them so much money.
International footy doesn’t do anything for them other than give their players a place to get injured, so even though it is clearly the obvious way to grow the game, that logic won’t fly with the most important men.
The IRL isn’t asking the NRL to do anything, though. It’s just asking them to sort out its own internal dispute and then allow the IRL a window in which to plan.
They’ve already scratched mid-season Tests in the Southern Hemisphere – despite being wildly popular with fans – to placate NRL clubs, with an international window agreed for October-November.
In the Northern Hemisphere, England are already booked in to face France in both men’s and women’s in late April. They’d love to be able to pencil in a Kiwi tour too, if someone would tell them when their opponents will be free.
(Photo by Jan Kruger/Getty Images for RLWC)
Both Tonga and Samoa are in discussions about when they might play each other after the end of the NRL season, but the respective governing bodies don’t know who will be able to play or if they will be able to use stadiums in Australia.
Tonga coach Kristian Woolf and Samoa coach Matt Parish have been discussing a double header, with one game in Tonga and another in Samoa, but nothing is currently possible.
“Kristian and I have been talking for a couple of years now about one of the things we would both like to do is play a Test in Tonga and a Test in Samoa against one another,” said Parish.
“I would like to think that one day it might happen. That would be unreal for Tonga and Samoa (to play next year).
“I can’t imagine how crazy that would be and how unreal it would be. Not only that, I am sure that both sets of players would love to do that.
“You talk about leaving legacies and all that. That would be unbelievable.”
They might play the Kangaroos, too, but that’s all for the birds at the moment. Whisper it quietly, the Kangaroos might play New Zealand too, something that will excite everyone involved.
This isn’t a dispute that just affects non-Australians: the Kangaroos and Jillaroos also haven’t got a fixture scheduled beyond next Saturday. The crucial difference for the NRL and ARLC is that they already have their pinnacle in Origin, so it doesn’t affect them as much.
The impasse that has set in over in Sydney isn’t about international footy, which everyone basically agrees is a good thing, but it does show how low down the list of priorities it is for powerbrokers in the NRL.
Tellingly, the RLPA is set to send reps to the World Cup final this weekend in Manchester, but Peter V’landys and Andrew Abdo have already pulled out of the trip.
Had they come, they could have sat in the back of O’Sheas bar, mere footsteps from where the trade union movement was founded in 1868, and had a long discussion about industrial relations.
Then, they might have thought about the hold-up they’re causing for everyone else and decided to get around the table and work something out.
It’s hard to imagine the PFA – the RLPA for soccer players in the UK – getting into a dispute with the Premier League that stopped the FIFA World Cup in its tracks. But at this nascent stage, that’s where International Rugby League is situated.
There’s a lot of talk about how the IRL doesn’t have any cash and needs the NRL to fund it, but that really isn’t the case.
The IRL has plenty of opportunity to make its own cash, independent of the NRL, if only the NRL would let them know when and where its employees will be available.
There’s a 10-year plan ready to go. There’s much more action to sell to broadcasters, sponsors and fans. The chance to enter into a new era of international footy is here: we just need the NRL to get its own house in order.