Bought tickets this week for the game at the emirates after I was told all teams but Australia agreed to come, it was expected that Australia might not come or might be represented by a squad that wasn't the "best", but surprised New Zealand pulled out after saying they would come, not sure what changed their minds.

If they postpone the World Cup until next year but start it a week earlier (third Saturday in October rather than the fourth) then the final would be a couple of days before the FIFA World Cup starts.

I'd have happily gone to see Australia v Fiji in Hull but the prospect of, say, Brazil v Fiji is somewhat less tempting especially at £25/£40 a ticket.

This is rlfans resident champagne socialist you are talking about. Boris could say the sky is blue and Wrencat would say he’s lying and then blame him for world poverty

It's the most un-kiwi thing that they've done in my time here.
I can only assume the "opening up" of the UK, followed by an increase in cases/hospitalisations/deaths has rattled the Kiwis. The Cricketers were there when the UK was in semi-lockdown, but now it's a free for all I can kind of understand why you'd not want to be in the country for weeks.......no doubt the All Blacks will rock up, but the reality is they'll be wrapped in bubble wrap and in/out in a matter of days.
We lock down when somebody sneezes here and the slow vaccine thing is now looking like a smart move, given Delta is crawling through vaccinated folk with ease.....
....I hope the cup goes ahead and it makes money........

What kind of team would NZ have without the NRL players though? Remember it's not just Australian players who can't play. All NRL players won't be permitted to play in the world cup.

NZ could have easily used that reason to be honest but I guess they wouldn't wanna throw the NRL under the bus.

Would love to hear what Big Mal thinks as he wanted to make international footy more popular. I am shocked the players were given no say on this decision. Can't forget about The women and the wheelchair players, they must be pretty upset right now!

You opened up July 19th.

167,000 new cases july19-22 and 271 new graves being dug.....perspective is everything, so for a comparison...... in May you had 256 deaths from 69,000 new cases.........that's an entire month v 4 friggin' days!
...no matter your politics, no matter if you wear a tin foil hat or not.....you'd be insane not to see why it might be a concern if you were thinking of visiting the UK in the near future.

Top post matches the BBC analysis that the government have lost the plot....

Who's assuming Covid will be all gone by then.......or that their players will be vaccinated by then given their resistance to having the vaccine....

The players are the only ones who can make the NRL change. Will take the players Union to oppose the decision.

They need to ask the players and see how many are up for it and go from there

er, what?
Did Ian Lenegan tell you that?

The Vaccine roll out has been slow and determined in Australasia because we're going to make ourselves and our countries safe, not in a mad frenzy to head to Benidorm or a Night out at the local discotheque.



In other news, it shows just how small fry we are as a sport. FIFA would go with a world cup without Italy or Brazil, Union without the ANZACS, Cricket without the ANZACS too......but RL?

We lose the players from one competition and 67% ( Number of AU/NZ born players at RLWC 2013) of all players are gone from the cup.....this is an opportunity to press ahead with a European comp.....and make it bloody annual!

Sorry but union would press ahead with world cup without the All Blacks. Nah I don't think they would.

All you have done is speculate union and cricket would. It's an opinion which I disagree with that's for sure.

.
Who were Union World Champions 3 times and they weren't even invited to the party in 1987? Cricketers reckon the best side in the world wasn't asked to play for 21 years......don't cite your opinion without first looking at the facts!
The All Blacks are a draw........but England Union will fill TW2 against most sides.....that's the strength of their code!

If you mean South Africa no they were not the best cricket side in the world lol.

Move it to Brisbane.
Most of the players are already in Queensland.
you'd need to bring a hundred from England, France and a few scattered countries - put them up in a resort for 2 weeks - and we're good to go.

PNG side is mostly in the Hunters, who are already in Qld.

Fiji Silktails are already in Sydney.

Kiwis are already in Qld.

Most of the Tongan and Samoan players are in the NRL, as arethe best of the Fijians, and Kumuls.

Give the nex one to the UK if they can get their together.

International sports teams will be in isolated bubbles so that’s completely irrelevant. This is the Australians thinking the start date of NRL 2022 takes priority over the World Cup. It doesn’t it’s a domestic comp as is even the state of origin.

Play it without them but they’ll have to qualify for any future ones and fine them if they fail to release players.

One country doesn’t own the sport over everyone else no matter how much better they are at playing it.

Make the decision now and when the Queensland government boots the NRL out and they’re forced to come cap in hand to the party tell them to shove it.

The average age of Covid deaths is 81 in the UK

You can't tell me fit young NRL players will be scared?

You mention Fifa not going ahead without Brazil ?
However, the Copa America and Euro's both took place.
The Union boys are "getting on with it" as are most other sports.
Aussie are playing Scotland and NZ playing in Italy and yet, "The Greatest Game" cant get their bloody act together - well, not those who ply their trade in the NRL.

Sorry but, the NRL shouldn't be allowed to put their domestic comp ahead of the World Cup, end of.

Funded by who, at 3 months notice?

This WC has lots of funding from UK/EU sponsors and the UK government

And it's not just playing the tournament that matters. As I already said the economic impact to regions in the UK is huge - not far off £9M for Manchester and Cardiff from the 2013 tournament I believe. Plus then there's the interest generated at grass roots which this country desperately needs if we are to even have another WC over here or dare I say it, professional RL.

No we don't we lose Australia and New Zealand. The decisions were made by the NZRL and ARLC (clearly off the back of pressure from NRL). Players representing other countries can play the NRL clubs have no legal right to stop them.

Again this is the problem. This thing is in circulation, there's nether really going to be 'good time' because there's always going to be plenty of cases, certainly for the foreseeable. So if they aren't coming now based on this logic, they're not going to be travelling for international tournaments for the medium-term future. It's setting a decision-making precedent.

What I suspect, as others have mentioned, is that 'safety and welfare' is really referring to players time off having to eat into the season due to quarantine on the way back, rather than covid.

Apparently lots of Australian players are looking at playing for other nations. Damian Cook and James Tedesco the most vocal, Tedesco talking of playing for italy under the heritage rule.

Rather than do that, surely we just need to find 20 Aussies and 20 Kiwis who are willing to put their hands up and travel. If they are, and are happy to abide by whatever regulations the NRL require for the season next year, surely we'd just put an 'Australian Invitational' and 'NZ Invitational' team in their place.

Ultimate two fingers up to the NRL!! It'd be very much like the 95 world cup where Aus weren't at full strength because of the SL war, but you'd still get a bloody good side. Would be exactly the same as when we played Tonga the year before last....they were 'Tonga Invitational' because the Tonga RFL Governing Board had been kicked out......no one noticed any difference!!



More than one way of skinning at cat.....The WC Board need to look at this option urgently IMO.

If you're late for pre-season training you'll be fined.....not to mention clauses in your contract barring you from Amy activity that may injure you causing your employer more expense.
Legal or not, the NRL clubs tell players where and when.....and I suspect very few will be flying north this autumn.

https://www.nrl.com/news/2021/07/23/fin ... next-week/ There are some good arguments in this. Quote .The announcement by the ARLC and NZRL on Thursday was met with anger in Britain but V’landys hit back at the criticism and said the welfare of players who had been forced to relocate to Queensland and concerns about them catching COVID in the UK were behind the decision. "The health of our players comes first, self-interest and tournaments comes second in our eyes," V’landys told 2GB. "They can carry on as much as they like but we make no apology that we first take into account the health of our players. "It is a world tournament and I don’t begrudge that but our players have had a very tough year. They are currently in Queensland away from home, they are in isolation for 14 days up there, then they’d have to go to England and come back to isolate for another 14 days. It is just too much. "There are 40,000 positives per day in England of COVID-19. There’s 600,000 people this week in isolation. The last thing we want to do is take them over there, they catch the virus and they are stuck in a hotel room for 14 days in isolation. They would even have to isolate if they are a close contact "When we did the risk analysis it was too much and our priority has always been the welfare of our players, and we aren’t going to take that risk." New Zealand coach Michael Maguire said he wouldn’t begrudge Kiwis with dual eligibility representing their heritage. Bennett said the fact so many Australian and New Zealand players were eligible for the Pacific nations may be a silver lining for the likes of Tonga, Samoa, PNG, Fiji and the Cook Islands. "If they went of their choice and they could take quality players with them, which they are all in the NRL so they are quality players, it will only enhance their position as far as I can see," Bennett said. "There is a whole lot of nations that make up the World Cup. We are just a part of it." Tonga coach Kristian Woolf told NRL.com he had spoken with his players and they wanted further information, while Samoa's Matt Parish and his Cook Islands counterpart Tony Iro said they were waiting to hear if the tournament would proceed. Peters said comparisons should not be made between the World Cup and other sporting events in England, such as Wimbledon or the end-of-season All Blacks and Wallabies Tests. "It’s a five-week tournament with 31 teams in total on the ground, and a large proportion of those are not vaccinated, for their own personal choice or the slowness of the vaccine program in both Australia and New Zealand," Peters told SEN Radio. "When you see cases explode in the UK, they’ve been up 33 per cent in the last week, we just can’t put our people in that environment. '" Unfortunately the number of covid cases in the UK does give the NRL some kind of get out. You can't argue that the numbers don't look good.

https://www.nrl.com/news/2021/07/23/fin ... next-week/ There are some good arguments in this. Quote .The announcement by the ARLC and NZRL on Thursday was met with anger in Britain but V’landys hit back at the criticism and said the welfare of players who had been forced to relocate to Queensland and concerns about them catching COVID in the UK were behind the decision. "The health of our players comes first, self-interest and tournaments comes second in our eyes," V’landys told 2GB. "They can carry on as much as they like but we make no apology that we first take into account the health of our players. "It is a world tournament and I don’t begrudge that but our players have had a very tough year. They are currently in Queensland away from home, they are in isolation for 14 days up there, then they’d have to go to England and come back to isolate for another 14 days. It is just too much. "There are 40,000 positives per day in England of COVID-19. There’s 600,000 people this week in isolation. The last thing we want to do is take them over there, they catch the virus and they are stuck in a hotel room for 14 days in isolation. They would even have to isolate if they are a close contact "When we did the risk analysis it was too much and our priority has always been the welfare of our players, and we aren’t going to take that risk." New Zealand coach Michael Maguire said he wouldn’t begrudge Kiwis with dual eligibility representing their heritage. Bennett said the fact so many Australian and New Zealand players were eligible for the Pacific nations may be a silver lining for the likes of Tonga, Samoa, PNG, Fiji and the Cook Islands. "If they went of their choice and they could take quality players with them, which they are all in the NRL so they are quality players, it will only enhance their position as far as I can see," Bennett said. "There is a whole lot of nations that make up the World Cup. We are just a part of it." Tonga coach Kristian Woolf told NRL.com he had spoken with his players and they wanted further information, while Samoa's Matt Parish and his Cook Islands counterpart Tony Iro said they were waiting to hear if the tournament would proceed. Peters said comparisons should not be made between the World Cup and other sporting events in England, such as Wimbledon or the end-of-season All Blacks and Wallabies Tests. "It’s a five-week tournament with 31 teams in total on the ground, and a large proportion of those are not vaccinated, for their own personal choice or the slowness of the vaccine program in both Australia and New Zealand," Peters told SEN Radio. "When you see cases explode in the UK, they’ve been up 33 per cent in the last week, we just can’t put our people in that environment. '" Unfortunately the number of covid cases in the UK does give the NRL some kind of get out. You can't argue that the numbers don't look good.

I am totally confused with the talk of players in the NRL playing in this tournament who represent the non ANZAC nations. The whole reason them two pulled out was safety concerns. If non ANZAC NRL players are allowed to play can someone please explain to me how Aus and NZ have any argument to have made this decision. How can you claim safety and player welfare when you are allowing everyone outside of the aus and NZ teams play in England and have no issue with them coming back home.

If this was to happen then RFL & Co have to seek legal action for sure. I don't see how you can argue that Tom Burgess who lives in Sydney can play but his teammate Damian Cook who also lives in Sydney can not.

They haven't actually explicitly said they can't play. They have only said Aus and NZ are pulling out. They don't have authority to speak for the Pacific nations but yes as I understand it the clubs now can refuse players permission to travel as the NRL have deemed it unsafe.