Australia and NZ have pulled out!! What a shambles.. and a major blow to the sport

It was inevitable. I don't know why they announced the world cup was going ahead as scheduled without Australia's agreement. The sport is run by absolute amateurs.

I believe the NZRL signed the agreement a week ago! that is a disgrace.

The ARL are insular and only care about the NRL and SOO, this is not about layer welfare however much they say it is. I mean did they even ask the players?

Lets see if they can raise Invitational sides, the ARL cannot stop players from playing in the tournament

No but the NRL clubs can! So that affects England and Wales also! I see no option but to postpone which will be one heck of a climb down.

This is tough. Don’t forget many of the NZ players have been isolating away from home for quite some time. Apparently the player’s association was asked and the players aren’t up for it - would imagine in reality some will be and some won’t, but they won’t want to come with weakened sides.

There is some BS in the excuses they are making IMO - bottom line is the players are sick of quarantine and all, they’ll do it for their employers because they have to but maybe not for an international tournament on top of that.

Ironically the UK will probably be safer than Australia by the time the tournament takes place.

Was on the cards for months really. There was a meekly offered compromise when the aussies half-heartedly suggested holding it over there instead but I don't think there was any real intent to do it.

We can talk as tough as we want, without these two its dead in the water and with the current shambles of a response to the still raging COVID situation it will be a while before we see international RL.

Have to agree mate. With COVID in the background you would need aligned leadership of the sport to navigate through - we just don't have that at national levels, never mind international.

The ARL apparently gave the WC organisers 4 minutes warning before pulling out - that is disgraceful, they should have pulled out before the announcement was made that it was going ahead

Or they should not have announced the world cup was going ahead without Australia's agreement.

Absolute amateur hour isn't it? Seemed inevitable Aus and NZ would pull out and can't imagine a WC without them. Then the big fanfare announcement saying it's definitely on, here's the countdown, mailshots about tickets and then a week later this. Whether you blame Aus/NZ for lack of notice or organiser for making announcements prematurely the lack of communication between all parties is staggeringly bad. Complete shambles. Going to be some climbdown when they postpone/cancel after all the gung-ho promotion they piled on last week.

It's no surprise really, the Aussie states have been fully locking down despite only a handful of cases, so the idea of sending dozens of unvaccinated people to a country with a potentially 100k daily cases per day seems terrifying.

Yet they're sending the RU team over and how many to the olympics?

Why not just vaccinate the players?

This has nothing to do with player welfare.

This is not a shock however very shabby the way it has come out. Clearly there are leadership issues within the RFL to get to this point and it does not reflect well for the wider game.Hopefully things settle down covid wise and actually next season if everywhere is opened up in the UK it may be an attractive place to play for players who have an urge to travel and have been unable to do so for a couple of years

I don't disagree.

I hope the RLWC still goes ahead just to show the Australian RL they dont own the game . They might think they're sitting preggy as big fish in there sporting backwater but they dont seem aware that they cant diss association football like they do Aussie rules and RU . I still think they are insular backwoodsmen country cousins. And I refuse to refer to them as The NRL .

I would go ahead with it without NZ/Australia.
Yes it devalues the tournament but why should all the other countries miss out?
Sod em at least it gives England their best chance of winning it

Probably end up losing in the final to PNG

Are Tonga still coming?

Good point.Unfortunatley the party in power in Aus have botched the vaccine rollout.Personally I think they should go ahead with the tournament. Regardless.If Aus or NZ don't want to take part so be it.

I’ve been coming round to that way of thinking too. Run the tournament, use it to showcase the women’s game and the wheelchair game etc. We may need to reach out to bring some new nations in I don’t know.

This is a mess with the government funding which has been acquired etc.

Leeds Live reporting that lots of support among players abs coaches for doing the WC still. The NRL is so political sometimes. Nice to see there is still a majority support for the international game from those who matter.

If the sponsors, tv etc are still prepared to back it, I would carry on with the tournament.

I saw a video interview with Gus Gould a couple of weeks ago and before any of this came to light when he cast a large shadow over the Competition not going ahead.
Gus said that from the NRL clubs perspective that all NRL players are allowed 8 weeks rest in between each season and that he couldn't see the World Cup going ahead as the NRL players would only have a very short pre season as a result before the 2022 season started.
He also said that as all of the Pacific nations players were all predominantly playing within the NRL competition that they wouldn't be allowed to play either.

After hearing the noises currently being made by the elite players within the NRL
Perhaps they hold a far higher regard of the World Cup than their clubs do?
After all not all great players get the chance to represent or even win a World Cup for their country.

How good would it be if all of these players stood firm and said that they wanted to play in the World Cup

Perhaps they could pick some SL based players to fill out some of the squads?

It amazes me that people still believe the smokescreen. NRL has its own agenda here. Big business, big money, and they don't want to compromise that. International game has been dead for a long time, this being the final nail in the coffin....