1) A fortnight after the RFL announced they will be bidding to host the 2021 Rugby League World Cup, the draw for the 2017 finals will be revealed next Tuesday morning. All we know so far are 11 of the 14 finalists and that it will start on 27 October, with the final on 2 December. Venues and fixtures will be confirmed next Tuesday, with three groups games set for Papua New Guinea and the rest split between co-hosts Australia and New Zealand.
2) Let’s hope the World Cup is fair. The draw released on Tuesday will have been curated, rather than being an open draw. Another 14-team World Cup means a potential repeat of the close shave with farce we had in 2013, when Scotland could have been eliminated despite earning five points while France would have progressed with just one! The 2021 World Cup will have 16 teams, bringing an end to the “super group” that was a dismal failure in 2008 when heroic Papua New Guinea were cast as the giants’ doormat, a baton passed to Ireland in 2013. Every nation should have a chance of escaping their group.
3) The RFL have been bold in suggesting their 2021 hosting bid will include Newcastle, both Manchester stadiums and Wembley. They must have been inspired by last year’s rugby union World Cup, which filled major football arenas stadiums, marketing them as “Be There” events. These stadiums are already familiar rugby league venues, which should help. The RFL will host 80% of games in the north in exchange for £15m government funding towards the “northern powerhouse”, meaning only one or two major fixtures will be outside the heartlands.
4) The 2021 bid plans to spread the 31 games across 12 grounds, meaning some may only have one game, most just two. The 51 Euro 2016 games were shared out between just 10 major venues, meaning each city had around four or five games and a few weeks to enjoy being hosts, not a couple of days. The dismal RLWC in 2000 was the worst example of spreading a product too thinly: the 31 games were scattered over 27 mainly disinterested venues across six countries! Hosting more than one game pays off far more for each city.
5) The Euros were a sorry reminder to league fans of what France RL once had. Les Chanticleers used to play internationals at Parc de Princes in Paris and the giant Stade Vélodrome in Marseilles, and at the old stadiums in Bordeaux and Lyon. Now they play in front of four-figure gates at suitably-sized club grounds such as Albi, Toulouse and Perpignan. The most successful recent internationals have been at the football stadium in Avignon, where France will take on England in October.
6) Ensure everyone has a fair rest between games next year. At the Euros, France had just two days off between the semi-final and the final, and they had to fly from Marseille to Paris. No wonder they ran out of steam on Sunday night. Not quite as tough as Scotland’s schedule at the 2008 Rugby League World Cup, when their reward for an historic win over semi-finalists Fiji was also two days off, with a 400-mile flight to Rockhampton, where they faced Tonga in sweltering conditions in a dead rubber. No wonder their Last XIII Standing lost by a record 48-0!
7) International sport sells, so play more of it! Encouragingly, Wayne Bennett has apparently demanded the return of the mid-season test for England in 2017. Don’t be surprised if our British- and Australian-based players meet up in Dubai to play New Zealand. If that doesn’t happen, another meeting with France will. It doesn’t matter that England will win. France have lost 56 of their last 58 meetings with England, Great Britain, Australia and the Kiwis, but they still want to play the big boys.
8) Have faith in rugby league’s entertainment value. Rarely is a league match described by desperate commentators as “cagey” or “tactically fascinating” when they mean “boring”. But do everything we can to get in front of millions of eyeballs on terrestrial TV, not thousands on pay-TV, otherwise the general public will neither know about it nor care.
9) As Iceland and Wales proved, underdog success draws the public into international competitions. League fans were thrilled by previously unknown players from the USA, Cook Islands, Scotland, Fiji etc at the last World Cup. Exposing the personalities within these humble teams can only widen our game, and that means playing follow-up internationals sooner, not a year or more later.
10) Don’t worry about having “heritage players” in your squad – but don’t fill it with them. Seven of the Wales players in the semi-final were born and bred in England; five of the victorious Portugal team weren’t born there; and neither were half a dozen Republic players born in Ireland. Yet they were all embraced as their nations’ sons, and accepted unilaterally as genuine national representatives. The likes of Lebanon, USA, Scotland and Ireland need to acknowledge the delicate balance between fielding a competitive team and a foreign one. You need local heroes.
11) Expect few – if any – serious rivals to England hosting RLWC 2021 but the proposed eight-team Confederations Cup in 2018 could see a new host nation enter the field. France, Canada, USA and South Africa could all make competitive bids, with only five or six venues required to stage the 15 games, France could use major cities with league heritage such as Paris, Bordeaux, Marseilles, alongside modern stadiums in Perpignan, Avignon and a renovated Toulouse.
Clubcall: La Reole XIII Lions
Spending last week in the Dordogne, No Helmets paid a trip to La Reole, a small town about an hour from Bordeaux. Having won three promotions in the last six years – from the local competition to Elite 1 – come September they will line up against Carcassonne, champions Limoux, and the second teams of Catalans and Toulouse. When I visited La Reole’s Stade Municipal on the banks (literally) of the Garonne 15 years ago, there was nothing but a small stand, dressing rooms and a cool, art-deco entrance. Remarkably, it hasn’t changed a jot. Somehow an amateur village team, whose players only got petrol money last season, will be dining at French rugby league’s top table. With 10 foreigners in their Elite 2-winning squad, including Wiganer Ritchie Shaw, La Reole Lions were as cosmopolitan as their town is traditional. Read far more about their unlikely adventure in the next issue of Rugby League World magazine.
Foreign quota
There were presidential elections in France last week. While the all-powerful rugby union federation are about to build a national stadium in southern Paris, Carcassonne rep and former France international Marc Palanque ousted Carlos Zalduendo (he of the exuberant Dali-esque moustache) as FFR XIII president on the back of a manifesto promising to prioritise the national team and getting Elite 1 back on TV. That seems essential.
Admittedly an unscientific survey, I didn’t see a single mention of “rugby a treize” all week in Sud Ouest, the daily paper that bestrides the rugby-mad region from La Rochelle down to Toulouse and Biarritz. And there was not a single word of rugby league in national sports paper L’Équipe the day Catalans Dragons hosted Wigan in their biggest fixture of the season, which attracted nearly 12,000, on a par with most top flight French football and union crowds. The yellow pages of wonderful rugby paper Midi Olympique reported that the Dragons attracted 2,000 to their Ten Years of Super League post-match party and an incredible 4,500 to “la soirée” at Perpignan’s Palais des Expositions. The only RL lines in L’Equipe were the TV listings, where beIN Sports screen every Sky broadcast live and most of the NRL. At least holidaying or expat York RL fans could read the City Knights line up in the paper (having been Toulouse’s latest victims).
What a trick Super League Europe missed 20 years ago, fabricating Paris St Germain instead of giving berths to “treizeste” cities Perpignan, Toulouse or Carcassonne. If current League One leaders Toulouse Olympique do end up in Super League it will be an awkward means to a successful end.
Goal-line drop-out
The impact of Brexit on rugby league will take some time to pan out but overseas player recruitment is certain to be affected. The opportunity to circumnavigate work permit criteria via the Kolpak agreement will come under review while bringing over Antipodeans with EU passports looks doomed. The plummeting pound also means the NRL’s salary cap is growing even bigger relative to that of Super League.
Unlike most Guardian readers, the traditional rugby league heartlands were solidly behind the Leave campaign. Of the English clubs, 30 were in boroughs that voted out, with the others all based in cities (Leeds, London, Oxford and York). Most of the results were close either way, but there were ten rugby league boroughs that had more than 60% voting to leave, including Doncaster with a massive 69%, Hull (68%), Wigan (64%) and Whitehaven (62% of Copeland voters).
In contrast, one of the highest Remain areas nationally was Haringey on 76%, London Skolars’ local council; 70% of Oxford voted to remain; and Ealing (current home of the Broncos) hit 60%. Add rugby league to the list of communities divided by the EU Referendum.
Fifth and last
The RFL have announced that former Coronation Street star Craig Charles will DJ at Super League’s Grand Final in October – a fine, funky choice – but you may have missed this pearler on Cora. Comic dimwit Kirk informed his temporary landlord Norris that his estranged wife Beth has surprisingly sophisticated taste in sport. “You’d never guess but she’s a mad rugby league fan. She shouts at the telly.” Given the actress who plays Beth opts not to disguise her Grimsby accent, we can only assume she is a devotee of fellow north Lincolnshire product Eorl Crabtree and therefore Huddersfield Giants, rather than Weatherfield’s local club, Salford Red Devils. Either way, I think we should be told.
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