Well at least you got the “rugby union is still a minority sport” part right…

You can have all the free speech you want, it doesn’t mean that what you said was intelligent.

This has been a far more competitive and entertaining competition than the recent Rugby Championships & Bledisloes. But don’t take my word for it, the dwindling audiences in Australia for rugby union speak for themselves.

Harry, you’re in luck. They say tin foil hats are in fashion this summer.

A major reason why those players are opting to play for Australia & New Zealand instead of their home nations is because as stupid as the international schedule might be they know at least they’ll play some games with those countries. Do the Samoans even know what their next game is let alone their next tournament?

That’s the real joke.

Anything that encourages players to play for their real country (scheduling, exemptions etc) creates closer international competition and that’s what will grow the game in the long run. If we’re looking to expand the competition with 2-4 more teams we’re going to need these international players to sustain that growth. That’s the real way NRL clubs are going to benefit.

The intensity Samoa are showing is definitely worthy of Origin. We really need to be locking in regular October & November for internationals every year so that rugby league fans maintain their interest.

Give it 5-10 years of non-Australian dominance and more of teams ranked 4-10 playing like Samoa and yes it’ll start to have real Origin like intensity/interest.

Well the 2010 tournament had an average of 19,644 and total attendance of 137,506. The 2014 tournament is currently on 21,328 and 85,310 with 3 matches left including the final so it’s likely to beat the record. The margin between 1st & 4th is only 28 points which is pretty staggering. All this for a competition which at the moment is essentially just icing on the cake after the NRL & State of Origin.

For a comparison the pinnacle of Australian union the Rugby Championship has lost 13k in crowd averages in just 2 years and the margin in 2014 between 1st & 4th was 125 points.

Anybody convinced that the tournament is all but decided can simply go and put their money on it.

While the possibility remains that Australia can make the final and win it, it’s no certainty. In deed a number of margins need to go their way just to assure that. At this stage at any combination could happen if the countries want it enough. It really has been an open, free flowing and exciting competition.

But if you want to watch a tournament where the outcome is pretty much per-determined go watch the *yawn* Rugby Championship and the *yawn* Bledisloe Cup…

I’m not quite sure what the trolls are getting so worked up about. I specifically said — it’s only a matter of time before there’s a Top Tier of Rugby League nations in line with what Rugby Union has.

I mean look at this way – in Rugby Union the team ranked 11th in the world — Japan — has only beaten Tier 1 teams 4 times in their entire history since 1932. World Cup participants Ivory Coast, Spain, Portugal, Zimbabwe, Russia & Namibia haven’t won a game there. Japan, Uruguay, Georgia, USA & Romania have only managed to jag one win – usually against other no hopers.

Even the Tier 1 teams have their problems. Argentina ranked 10th have only managed 1 win out of 18 Rugby Championship appearances, Italy have only won 11 of their 75 Six Nations matches, Scotland only 19.

You look at the World Cups–
4 have won it Union, 3 in League
8 have made the Semis in Union, 7 in League
12 have made the Quarter Finals in both

Admittedly the tournaments have different structures but the fact that despite its global claims the difference is only marginal and it’s getter smaller all the time.

Samoa are ranked 7th, the difference between teams 4 to 11 is slight. Like I said when you consider that Fiji, PNG, France & Wales have bigger player pools, this explains why there have been 4 Four Nations tournaments each with a different qualifier. In fact it is now 5 and 5 with Scotland making it for the first time.

It’s only a matter of time before there’s a Top 10 teams in league that are beating each other on a consistent and competitive basis.

When you consider that Fiji, PNG, France and Wales have a bigger player pool than Samoa and with England stepping up it’s only a matter of time before there’s a Top Tier of Rugby League nations in line with what Rugby Union has.

“Sure a fair few clubs will go under”

Imagine if it was a club in a key market that went under. Clubs shouldn’t die based solely on what happens on the field. They really shouldn’t die at all — that’s a bad thing!

There was a reason why a lot of clubs got into heavy debt back before the salary cap — they were trying to buy premierships. Spend a motza on top talent, win a premiership and you boost your fans and you get out of the debt mire that you’re in.

However the problem is only 1 team can win it. 15 are going to fail each year with this strategy. That’s why the debt keeps growing and growing.

The salary cap needs to stay it just needs to have all payments come direct from NRL HQ so clubs can’t argue that there are grey areas. Any brown paper bags would therefore be cut and dry.

I agree about Kiwis being weakened too, I’ve said it before.

As for a Pacific Cup with USA in it well it’s alright as long as Canada & Jamaica are still getting their matches. I’d rather one off matches against PNG, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga until they start beating Aus or Nz. Otherwise it’ll be a very uneven comp.

They lost the 4 Nations qualifying match to Samoa 32-16

Playing an international before an NRL or Origin match is kind of akin to saying that internationals are on par with Under 20s football. I mean no offence to them but that’s what fumbleball does with their lol international cup lol

If we want to have internationals taken seriously we need to treat them seriously and that means treating them as event in their own right.

There’s no reason why the prelude to this tournament couldn’t have been PNG vs Australia in Port Moresby, Fiji vs England in Suva, New Zealand vs Tonga in Rotorua etc and then those guys + Cook Islands & others could have been playing a Pacific Cup at the same time the 4 Nations was on with some of those matches as double headers to the 4 Nations or with themselves.

Well the Olympics also features Synchronised Swimming, Artistic Gymnastics and Badminton so Rugby Union fits in perfectly.

Seriously though, yes they’ll get some converts but there’s only a limited number of teams in the 7s format so it’ll more so be that the existing top Rugby 7s will consistently prevent outsiders from getting in.

The other thing to keep in mind is that there are other spectator sports at the Olympics – Basketball, Soccer, Tennis, Softball, Baseball etc – which you’d have to question whether their inclusion in the olympics has lifted their global appeal or is simply a representation of what was already there.

In fact I’d say union should probably be more concerned about following Softball & Baseball’s path – I mean Baseball was discontinued 5 times. Just staying in the Olympics would be their biggest priority because there are other sports just behind them.

What are Gold Coast United, North Queensland Fury and New Zealand Knights averaging this season?

Why are people bringing up the All Blacks match in the USA? You may as well bring up International Tug Of War crowds, it’s got about the same amount of relevancy. If union succeeds in the USA it has next to zero negative impact on rugby league and vice versa. In fact building awareness of ‘rugby’ in general in these markets serves both codes, we’ve seen that happen elsewhere.

Who really cares if rugby league isn’t played in Turkmenistan? It doesn’t make any claims to be a global giant in world sport. It is what it is. But the idea that if it’s not number 1 then it’s nothing — that’s pretty stupid.

All that matters is that where it’s played it continues to grow and that growth spurs growth in other places. That’s it. If in Australia rugby league can have a domestic league (NRL), state of origin and internationals that draw on par with union (which doesn’t have a strong domestic league) it’s in a pretty enviable position. The Union trolls for all their talk of global appeal need to actually take a long hard look at how that appeals has done little to stop the decline of Union in Australia.

And with time as teams like Samoa, Scotland etc step up, the scorelines get closer (as we’ve been seeing) well again that helps grow the game. At the moment all of that’s been happening with minimal resources and organisation, just wait till the money starts flowing.

Agreed. I mean sure we’ve got the 4 nations but why couldn’t England, Australia and New Zealand play the likes of PNG, Fiji and Tonga as one-off warm ups?

Sydney has 100+ NRL matches during the season.
Brisbane has 12.

So it makes sense to play the internationals in places like Melbourne, Brisbane, Newcastle etc which receive few rugby league matches.

There are simply more Australian NRL players than New Zealand NRL players. Combine that with the combinations found in Origin and 6-8 weeks of NRL competition to get players up to speed, people shouldn’t be surprised when the Anzac Test match is one-sided.

But when New Zealand get a camp together for an extended period – like in 4 Nations – they have the ability to beat Australia.

So the stats for the two nations aren’t a clear cut indication of New Zealand’s quality.

Scotland are a lock for the 2015 4 Nations.

Ireland would have to flog Wales and Frances would have to flog Scotland for them to miss out.

The next 4 teams:

West Coast Pirates in Perth
South Queensland Brothers in Brisbane
New Zealand II in Wellington/Christchurch
Central Coast Bears in Gosford

Sea Eagles –> North Sydney Sea Eagles and take over the Bears former North Sydney territory
Wests Tigers –> West Sydney Tigers
Merge Easts & Cronulla –> East Sydney Sharks split between SFS & Cronulla
then readmit the Adelaide Rams

20 team comp

The mid-season test heavily favours the Australians simply because there’s more Australian players who have played NRL and the Kangaroos tend to structure the side off last year’s Origin combinations.

Scrap it and play it at the end of the season when New Zealand has more time to bring their side together and it’ll be a closer contest.

Also it’s worth keeping in mind that in their past 23 Bledisloe Cup appearances the Wallabies have only won 4 times and they haven’t won the bloody thing since 2002.

That was also the biggest non-world cup test match crowd since the 1994 Ashes series.

Given that to some degree New Zealand were also at a disadvantage and god knows how many times they’ve played an undercooked Australian side and still fumbled it in the last 20 minutes, it was skill that got them through and all the power to them. I stand by my statement that they’re still favorites to take the tournament.

I think we’ll start seeing similar regionalised tournaments like that pop up around the world.

If/when England & New Zealand get closer to the Kangaroos with the right capitalization there’s no reason why Australia vs England or Australia vs New Zealand can’t rival Origin. Heck, those matches can already draw 1.5-2 million audiences.