Rugby world cup

Well there’s teams from 3 continents in this one and hopefully a 4th in 2017 so who knows.

No doubt this will be a strong World Cup which they’ll fail to build on just like in 1995.

I imagine our hopes differ ;)

As much as I enjoy seeing numerous Wigan born players play for Wigan and other clubs, it is slightly easier to make the top level in RL than football Mutty

ERR no they don’t sometimes snippets are shown in the world sports section on Fox SOCCER channel, they also show clips from the world conker championships on Fox Soccer world sports roundup slot, funnily enough they don’t show any worriers games but show Latics LIVE games quite often.

Perhaps you can show me evidence of some of the “pretty well attended pre season matches” that NRL teams play in the USA.

This from the NRL’s own website telling where their game is shown

Region: USA
Broadcaster: Fox Soccer
TV: Occassional Coverage
Online: Live-Stream
Replays: Live-Stream
Territories: USA
NOTE: All games are on live stream regardless of being on Fox Soccer

Flaming heck, even residents in the RL heartlands of Scholes and Whelley have been able to watch NRL games online since recently coming out of their caves that doesn’ t mean there is coverage in the USA. Even then I would love to see viewing figures among yanks.

Australia Day Challenge 2008

Souths 24 Leeds 26

Att 12500. An ARL record.

http://m.zimbio.com/photos/Russell+Crowe/Australia+Day+Challenge+Souths+v+Leeds/gSniTwg-FBh

A pic of Russell Crowe the Souths owner.

12500 for a friendly is superb if you ask me. Don’t forget the point that you all make day in and day out that nobody outside the M62 cares. There are over 800 registered players over there which for a country giving you the option of playing American Football, Basketball, Baseball and Ice Hockey is again superb.

Yes the numbers are small in comparison to other sports but they are growing and we can’t ask for any more than that. The more strides we can make in America the better.

Back to the World Cup and Scotland got a good win last night coached by a Latics mon.

I’ll take a guess at Gary Walsh.

But this is completely irrelevant.

All it proves is the competition for professional football contracts is so high that the small town of Wigan has struggled to produce players of a sufficient quality to sign for their town team. There are Wigan born professional players around, it’s just that they don’t play for Wigan.

Likewise if there were a few more Rugby League playing areas around you’d find less local lads playing for Wigan Warriors.

The post Egg has made regarding the Irish football team also isn’t entirely relevant either. The ‘pseudo Irish’ players who play for them (just like with the Scottish) is as a result of them trying to find a better standard of player. If they wanted to, they could easily fill an Irish team with Irish born, Irish raised professional footballers.

You could not do that with Rugby League.

They’ve tried to create a ‘World Cup’ out of something that isn’t true a world sport.

It’s akin to creating a Baseball World Cup – where only the Americans, Japanese and Cubans could raise a national team of sufficient quality that comprised of true nationals. All the other teams would be made up of Americans, Cubans and Japanese players who couldn’t get into it into their own national teams but who had tenuous links to other countries.

I quite like rugby league – not enough to pay money to watch it (regularly anyway) or to follow any team (other than a passing interest in how Leigh get on & checking to see if Wigan lost) but a good, close, game of rugby league is entertaining to watch.

That said, trying to hold any sort of World Cup in the sport is an absolute farce as (regardless of whether or not it is a growing sport in Ireland, the US or wherever) it is not played at anywhere remotely close to a competitive level anywhere other than Australia, New Zealand, England & France (at a push) – I mean 800 registered players in the US? there’s probably more than that registered in Leigh & Wigan alone.

Rather than flogging a dead horse with a world cup made up mainly of Antipodean emmigrants or 2nd/3rd generation immigrants they should hold an annual/bi-annual four team tournament of the countries above (swap England for GB). Let the viewing public watch some regular competitive international rugby league to try & generate interest more interest within those countries rather than some lame attempt to spread the gospel to Lebanon, the US etc..

Watching the RL authorities desperate attempts to sell various World Cups with differing formats just reminds me of the failed attempts to create interest in the sport in the likes of London, Gateshead, South Wales, North Wales & so on. Concentrate on making the product as strong as possible in its heartlands before moving on to conquer the world coz a house built on sand won’t last long

EDIT – Egg: I may be wrong but I don’t think that its correct when you said footballers from Northern Ireland playing for the Republic must have proved Southern Irish ancestry. I think that there was a FIFA ruling not that many years ago which allows them to be able to choose to represent either regardless of ancestry due to the history of the island & those 2 countries