Rugby League World Cup - Does the world really care?

So the time has again arrived for one of the worst World Cups. The Rugby League World Cup has been held inconsistently since 1954 and the 13th Cup is being held on home soil.

Logic would tell anyone that the winner is going to be New Zealand, Great Britain or Australia but if we are being completely honest something is seriously wrong if the Kangaroos don’t win the cup and win it easily.

Surely in the tournaments attempts for legitimacy it would be structured to ensure the cup is as good as it can be. Apparently not! The competition has been broken into three UNEVEN groups with two teams progressing from group 1 and only one team from groups 2 and 3. What is even more disturbing is that the big three nations are all in the group 1. Immediately one of the genuine Rugby League nations will be out of the cup before it even begins to get half interesting.

Sadly the Kiwi’s have lost Roy Asotasi and some other ‘dog’ we won’t even mention so once again won’t be as strong as they could be and the Poms will continue to be as overrated as they always have been. But I think they are the only ones who believe any hype about them.

The biggest threat to the Kangaroos would have been the Indigenous ‘Dreamteam’ who will play a welcome to country match on October 26 against New Zealand Maori. With players like Sam Thaiday, Carl Webb, Rhys Wesser and Preston Campbell the dreamers probably would have been a real chance to make the final.

I will be at the opening game in Sydney and the final in Brisbane (with The Fanatics tour) and expect to see the Kangaroos at both. I will be interested to see how good the football played is not, and also the crowd figures. The organisers have very kindly put the crowd figures for the past 12 tournaments on their site and there has been no great increase in the last 50 years. Did the NRL really only just realise this year the game wasn’t growing in popularity?