Why the rivalry, tradition and drama of the Ashes shows what rugby league left behind

When the Canberra Raiders went over for their opening try against St George Illawarra on Friday night, nobody could have anticipated what would happen next.

In what may well become the most watched rugby league try celebration in history, Elliott Whitehead recreated Jonny Bairstow’s controversial stumping at Lord’s. Quickly, it went viral.

On the cricket coverage, commentator Michael Atherton interrupted play to show the clip to the viewers, capping an incredible week in which cricket dominated both front and back pages of the British tabloids.

When Prime Ministers are engaging in a war of words over the “spirit of cricket”, you know that it has seriously captured the public imagination.

This Ashes had already been billed by Wisden as “the most anticipated series in a generation” before a ball had even been bowled.

The dramatic swings in momentum in every session at Edgbaston, Lords and Headingley have delivered a series worthy of the hype.

And while doubts over the future of Test cricket remain, the packed houses at cricket grounds across the UK are testament to the power of the long-standing rivalry between the two nations.

For most of the 20th century the “battle for the Ashes” didn’t just apply to cricket: it was the jewel in the rugby league crown too.

It was the great Bob Fulton who used to argue that no sport “has a better experience to offer than a Kangaroo tour”.

Fulton believed that tours were essential to the lifeblood of the sport: “The tour is about camaraderie and mateship, about tackling the “old enemy” on their own patch in front of tough, but appreciative crowds”.

Having first been fought in 1908 – some 26 years after the cricket series began – it became the link between the two great rugby league playing nations.

As Ken Arthurson, the ARL Chief, put it in 1995, it created some of the most mythologised moments in the history of the code: “It’s The Rorke’s Drift Test, The Battle of Brisbane, Battle of Leeds”.

Yet twenty years ago it quietly disappeared as State of Origin and the World Cup replaced it as the gold standard for representative football. But while watching Chris Woakes battle it out to the death on Sunday night, one can’t help but wonder how we lost our version of the Ashes.

There is little doubt that the NRL has done just fine in the post-Ashes world. Bigger TV deals and commercial growth mean that the international game is always going to be an afterthought.

The British game, by contrast, is in trouble. The TV deal is going down each year and its brightest youngsters are heading to Australia earlier and earlier.

League officials in the UK have brought in the sport finance giant IMG to advise on how to “reimagine” the sport. They haven’t said much, but they have signalled that growth lies in the international game. But without the Ashes, there is little prospect of captivating the interest of the wider British public.

Historically, the northern hemisphere has relied on the Kangaroos to boost its own profile. As I outline in my forthcoming book, Hope and Glory: Rugby League in Thatcher’s Britain, it was the direct influence of the Kangaroo tours in the 1980s that radically altered the image of the game in the UK.

In the 1970s the British still believed that they were the custodians of the game. Stung by an exodus of players, officials attempted to stop the ‘brain drain’ of talent by putting up trade barriers with the rest of the world.

An international transfer ban was initiated in the hope of closing the gap. It proved to be one of the most spectacular miscalculations in the game’s history.

When the Kangaroos ran through Britain unbeaten in the Autumn of 1982, there were serious questions posed about the future of the Ashes and the gulf in standards between the two nations.

The Australian general manager, Frank Farrington, observed how the British game was lightyears behind: “Britain played football which went out of fashion years ago”.

Organisers had feared that drubbings would turn people away. Instead, people began to turn up to matches hoping and expecting they would witness a Kangaroos box office performance.

One journalist quoted a member of the squad who said that he’d “never seen so many people ecstatic after their team was thumped”.

In the second Test at Wigan, where Great Britain were unable to score a single try, spectators sat back and admired the show. At one point, when the Australian team worked the ball through various players’ hands, the supporters spontaneously applauded them.

The Invincibles captured the hearts and minds of the British public. With the advent of home video, word of mouth soon spread throughout the sporting world that the Kangaroos were doing something radical across the rugby pitches of northern England.

When BBC commentator Ray French was travelling through the country as a schoolteacher, he found in places as diverse as Colwyn Bay, Shrewsbury and Fleetwood that all people wanted to do was speak about the Aussies.

The former rugby union player Clem Thomas ranked them alongside “the 1951 Springboks, the 1967 All Blacks and the 1971 Lions in New Zealand”.

What could have been the death knell for the British game turned out to be its salvation. Central to the story of Hope and Glory is the increasing influence of Australian culture on the UK.

Coaches and players were instructed to copy their methods while ambitious clubs such as Wigan mirrored their off-the-field structures. When the chequebooks opened and the “gold rush” began, players such as Mal Meninga, Peter Sterling and Brett Kenny changed the very idea of what it meant to be a professional sportsman in Britain.

Technological changes made the Australian game more accessible to the ordinary British supporter. Channel 4 started to show highlights from the Winfield Cup and clubs started ordering copies of Rugby League Week, which was available to read just 72 hours after it had hit newsstands in Sydney.

The rise of the video recorder saw firms import matches which were screened in pubs across the country. And with each year the Kangaroos returned the anticipation would build.

The magazine Sportsweek – the British answer to Sports Illustrated – put the Kangaroos on a par with the best sports brands in the world – above the All Blacks, Liverpool FC and the Chicago Bears.

This was the era of Fosters advertising, Neighbours and Crocodile Dundee where people increasing tapped into the cultural links between the two nations. Each time the Kangaroos returned the attendance records would break.

Revisiting the 1990 series for Hope and Glory was like entering another world. Mal Meninga promoted the series on breakfast TV and advertised Castlemaine XXXX on posters across the north.

Britain’s Ellery Hanley advertised for GAP while tabloids ran profiles on the life and times of Martin Offiah. Channel 10 even sent Jason Donovan over to promote the series.

When the two nations again met at Wembley for the 1992 World Cup final the anticipation that Britain could finally match Australia on the pitch drew significant national attention.

Offiah was signed up by Nike and the subject of a major publicity campaign on London tube posters. The message tapped into the rivalry that had built over ten years under the strapline: “Will the Aussies catch Offiah at Wembley?”

The Kangaroo tours led to a revival of the British game and gave administrators, spectators, and players something to aim towards each season. The challenge of the Ashes was the standard by which every British player set his goals.

As cross-code star Jonathan Davies revealed to me in Hope and Glory, he always viewed playing rugby union for Wales as an “ambition” but putting on a Great Britain jersey as an “achievement”. Everybody wanted to be part of the British side that won an Ashes. No Australian player wanted to be part of the one that lost It.

A three game series replaced the traditional tours in 1997 when the British game switched to summer but after two compelling series in 2001 and 2003, the decision was made to move towards a Tri-Nations competition.

In recent years the contest between Great Britain/England and Australia has all but disappeared. In the last decade, there have been just five matches between the two nations, two of which came at the 2017 World Cup, and greats such as James Graham, Sam Burgess, Jonathan Thurston and Cameron Smith never got the chance to etch their names in Ashes history.

One of the biggest mistakes of the 2021 World Cup was the decision not to structure the draw so that England played Australia in the opening game (as had happened in 1995, 2000, 2013, 2017), depriving fans of the rare opportunity to see the old rivalry renewed.

Whether it has a future in the new international landscape remains doubtful. One argument put forward in the UK is that matches against Samoa, Tonga and New Zealand can one day replace it. Others suggest that a revived Ashes series wouldn’t attract much interest because of the gulf in standards between the two playing nations.

Ultimately, as the events at Headingley this weekend have shown, the key to its success would rest on the rivalry generated by the players on the field. That only comes through playing each other consistently and letting the rivalry build organically.

The events of the past few weeks in cricket have been built around shared mythologies. Think David Warner punching Joe Root, Stuart Broad not walking, Sandpaper-gate, Ben Stokes’ last stand in 2019. Throw in the beef between Ian Botham and Ian Chappell and it’s little wonder that emotions are running high on all sides.

It’s worth remembering that in the 1990s interest began to wane in Ashes cricket as England struggled to compete against an all-conquering Australia side. But just two years after the rugby league Ashes was axed, the 2005 series propelled cricket back into the national consciousness in England.

They preserved with it and modernised the competition for a new audience and are now reaping the rewards. The packed houses across the UK and the anticipation for what comes next reminds us of the world that rugby league chose to leave behind.

Anthony Broxton is a writer and historian based in the UK. He is the author of a new book, Hope and Glory: Rugby League in Thatcher’s Britain, which charts the history of the sport in a pivotal decade in British history. The book is available for pre-order now and will be released as an E-book worldwide.