The NRL Needs to Annex British League For the Good of the Game

Steve Mascord argues that the NRL needs to incorporate British teams if we ever want to see decent international competition.

The great thing about sport is that random events so often conspire to created a cogent, even symbolic, narrative.

And so it was at a wet, blustery Headingley on Sunday night when the Frisbee-like World Club Series plate blew off its stand shortly before North Queensland were presented with the more sturdy World Club Challenge (WCC) trophy following a 38-4 win over Leeds.

Leeds Rhinos chief executive Gary Hetherington had been the one to push for the Series, 18 years after the first lopsided 1997 competition, and when it finally happened last year his team was not involved.

Another unhappy coincidence: Leeds had their backsides handed to them when they finally managed to get a start.

But the real symbolism is that while the World Club Challenge itself is heavy enough a concept to remain unhindered by Southern Hemisphere dominance, the extended version of the concept is so fragile it would be swept away by a zephr.

It’s as reliable a truism as rugby league has, anywhere: as soon as you expose more than one British team in a competition against their Australasian cousins, embarrassment follows soon afterwards. The ledger in such comps is currently 62-8 … not to European teams.

The 118-28 cumulative scoreline across the three games this year doesn’t just give Aussie critics an excuse to ridicule the concept. It hurts Super League’s IP in the domestic market as teams return to playing each other before crowds that perceive them as second rate, thanks to the beating they just took from their Australian rivals.

What to do?

Hall of Famer Garry Schofield believes Australia only became successful towards the end of the 1970s by introducing an international transfer ban which artificially encouraged domestic players.

But legally, that wouldn’t fly this century.

When NSW Country teams could not compete with Sydney sides, what happened? Illawarra, Canberra and Newcastle joined the Sydney competition.

Queensland diehards (not just of the Valleys variety) were having similar conversations as British league fans are this morning in the late 1970s as poker machine-funded Sydney clubs stole their players.

The answer was the Broncos, then the Cowboys and Titans.

What was the response to New Zealand going crazy for the Winfield Cup in the early nineties? The Warriors, that’s what.

Back in those days, interstate Trans-Tasman air travel seemed glamorous, whereas now it is routine. International air travel is now also the domain of a large portion of Westerners.

It’s only a matter of time – okay a couple of decades worth of time – because the same historical precedent gives us a British team in the NRL. One month at home, one month away. The visiting team schedule exactly the same as for the WCS.

Dunedin to Cape Town, with connections, is about the same time and time zone change and the rugby union types manage that for a full competition.

The biggest obstacles are not logistical, despite what you may think (I repeat, three clubs just did what you don’t think is practical). The obstacles are political.

How can you convince the Australasian clubs to give up a slice of the no-doubt massive UK TV rights (the Warriors are the most valuable side in the NRL because they have a whole country’s worth of broadcast rights) to keep the Rugby Football League afloat?

How do you stop all domestic competition in UK from sinking into complete obscurity, forever in the shadow of one NRL team? For this reason, the negatives currently outweigh the positives of a UK NRL team, even if someone stumped up the cash tomorrow.

I have two answers.

One, the NRL does what it has with touch football and completely acquires British rugby league so its central funding is responsible for both countries. Then the argument over dividing up rights money is no different than it is now.

Two, it introduces two or three British clubs at once, in say 2032, so that there is more than one focus for fans, sponsors and media and you don’t have weekends where the game disappears from the UK sport top table completely.

Three NRL teams could conceivably do a good job of replacing 12 Super League sides commercially on the national stage.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t think this will ever happen. It’s demonstrably likely if you look at the development of our competitions up to now and the evolution of other sports – even if we are all dead by the time it occurs.

People once thought the earth was flat, too.