...but true.
[urlhttp://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-league/41907318[/url

I think the Aussies have bust a got for this world cup. Top notch sponsorship for starters "$2.5 gravy and chips" plastered all over the pitch. lol. Not bad from a multi million sport

Should be mushy peas as well to properly reflect RL's north of England origins.

Aussies are just descendants of northern parochial RL fans ! insular swines. Thats what living on a island in the middle of the Asia region does to you.

There shouldn't be another WC in Australia. Crowds terrible, interest minimal. Play it in countries that actually want to watch it.

We have all known this to be the case so it's nothing really new if we are being honest.

The NRL created this with the success of origin. The big problem is that the rest of the world are pretty much held hostage by Australia in regards to international rugby league. Even if there was a desire for a bigger international calendar by other nations, the NRL will always be an obstacle.

Plus the whole issue of players having to commit to Australia if they want to play origin. Causing the smaller nations becoming weaker. This for a team that is doing all it can to minimise international rugby league matches. you couldn't make it up! Australia want all the best players but at the same time they want less international games.

Kear may be right, but as somebody who has a has heavy influence on talent development and on improving the product on the field in the northern hemisphere over the thick end of two decades, he's part of the problem.

You can't expect the Australian public to buy into international rugby if there is nobody who looks capable of competing with them.

The Euro nations have largely been disappointing in this WC - why would anyone but the most ardent purist want to hand over their cash to watch France, Wales, Scotland or Ireland?

Could the physical size of the country have anything to do with it? After all the individual states of Australia are larger than many countries. Could it be that the natives feel part of their state first and Aistralian second?

I've posted elsewhere, but in short let NZ host 3 pools and have one in PNG.
3 X Double headers in PNG or 6 Stand Alone fixtures there if they feel they could sell them and the rest in NZ.......the 3 host nations so far have:
PNG Average 14,500 (capacity) for 3 games
NZ Average 18,000 (75%) for 4 games
Australia Average bloody awful and there's no excuse for it.....8,800 or so......take their 3 games out and the average is 6.5k (allowing for double headers)....that's a disgrace!

Not a problem in cricket, rugby union or football

..or basketball where NZ Breakers have just Played the Perth outfit in Auckland and are then jumping on a plane to perth for the return fixture 3 days later.....8.5 hour flight over 5,400 kms!
Attendances in Townsville, Canberrra, Cairns have been shocking and why play at the SFS when somewhere like Leichhardt or Shark Park would have sufficed?
I'd never let the arrogant crims host another RLWC

They are insular when it comes to rugby league, but it's symptomatic of a number of issues.

Imagine england playing a tournament with just Scotland, wales, France, ireland. Would we get huge crowds? No. That's the equivalent to Australia. We are to them what Wales are to us, cannon fodder who we'll beat 99/10.

The heritage thing, it doesn't help when most of the southern hemisphere teams are made up of players born in Australia, they are basically playing against their z teams.

Someone said John Kear was part of the problem with NH teams. Nah, the problem is money, Irish have 30 dollars a day allowance, the rest comes out of the players pocket. 30 is nothing, cost of living in Aus is a joke, only good thing about that country is the weather.

Cairns is really small. Think they did ok and probably bigger crowds than Northern Pride get.

Interest in PNG and NZ seems good perhaps the whole comp should have been shared between the two nations... would have been interesting to see the community response to a neutral game in PNG

When I was a kid, Australian loved International League with a passion.
I still have old video cassettes of Kangaroo tours - but no way to play them now.
What killed it was no competition.
The first 3 or 4 times we won were great. after that, it didn't seem worth the effort.

oh is that right mr smarty pants??

seems enough of your lot out here after upending their entire lives, leaving home & families etc just to move to the other side of the planet for a little sun & some skin cancer

The idea is to spread the sport out around the country, you just can't play every game at some suburban ehole in sydney

Shark Park you say???

who was going to turn up for a game at shonk park?

My point about Kear was more that we can't keep blaming the Australians for not giving us the attention we think we deserve when the European nations simply can't keep up with the standard they are aspiring to. That's nothing to do with the cost of living in Australia.

Kear has (as, have all British coaches) been involved in elite talent development for the best part of 20 years, and yet we still can't build a competitive side - that's a failure of the game in Europe. Our best talent has to go to Australia to earn a fair salary - that's a failure commercially at club level (although I know people prefer to use the RFL as a lightening rod on that one).

We can't keep blaming the Australians for showing no interest in international RL when we're providing no reason for them to take any interest in us. England hasn't won a single fixture against the Aussies in something like 11 years - I can't think of another sport where arguably it's biggest rivalry is so pathetically one-sided.

Well Queensland won 8 consecutive series in the State of Origin games.

But they weren’t all 3-0 series whitewashs. When did Austrailia last lose a game? The best thing to get Austrailians interested in watching international again would be for Australia to get knocked out in the semi final, that would take some of the arrogance out of them.

Well that's the AB's buggered then isn't it

Having watched Australian touring sides since the early 1960s my thoughts are that whilst they have typically been better athletes than their UK equivalents it's changes to the game which have increasingly allowed them to utilise this to their advantage. For example playing on mud patches in the middle of a UK winter played in our favour. The days of contested scrums and lumbering forwards also favoured us. Finally the introduction of multiple high definition cameras has seen the end of the brutal physopath type of forward which was also a great leveller.

Agree silver - international RL exposes gaps in quality far more than RU. The muddy pitches may have gone from RU, but the ability to play a forward oriented game and starve the opposition of possession means a team with relatively poor backs can beat one with much better backs. Can you imagine the All Blacks backs vs any northern hemisphere team at RL? Wouldn't even be close.

The problem is the Kangaroos are that much better than England, but in RL there's no way to hide the gulf in class. Oddly enough I do give us half a chance in this WC, if NZ can turn the Aussies over. They were looking really good until half time vs Tonga, and they genuinely have a chance vs Aus. Whilst on paper NZ are better than England, we don't have the same mental block with them - most of our players have played and beaten them before.

If the "best side" always won then we'd have a very boring sport.......2008 and the Kiwis had no right to win the game but they did.

Kiwis just like to be good at something - anything will do.
If the warriors ever win the NRL they won't shut up about it for 40 years or so.