TV figures from the first weekend of the World Cup show plenty of support for tournament
IT’S a celebration of the game of rugby league and the cultures that play it. What’s not to love about the Rugby League World Cup, writes Paul Malone.
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IT FEATURED a prime-time television audience for which any Australian free-to-air network would gladly give up a week of their morning show budget.
Australians got a good, long look at how feverishly Papua New Guineans support their national side and there were sound starts for England and New Zealand, the traditional rivals to the Kangaroos which World Cup organisers did not need to see struggle on the opening weekend.
The narks who refuse to acknowledge anything good in international rugby league will fixate on the 50-point scores conceded by Wales and the United States as evidence the tournament has no right calling itself a World Cup.
But you just needed to know where to look to see how the 14-team World Cup does a job in fostering the game internationally and also entertaining those willing to be entertained.
“Who cares about the Rugby League World Cup?,’’ read the heading over one online columnist’s grumble last week.
Well, 1.4 million do for a start, pal.
That was the average audience nationally for Channel 7 for the Australia-England match on Friday, 472,000 of which were in Queensland.
Some context: the regular final episode of the Bachelorette series attracted a 1.75 million national audience during the week. Last Saturday week, the Bledisloe Cup match pulled an average of 700,000 viewers on free-to-air and another 190,000 on Fox Sports.
So, yes, fans do care about international rugby league.
Every four years, rugby league puts its chin out for devotees of sports such as football and rugby union to take a jab about league’s eligibility rules and the weakness of the code in big sports countries such as competing nations France and the United States.
What league’s version of the World Cup does is give a coherent focus for national federations trying to improve the game within its boundaries.
It also provides five weeks of entertainment by teams willing to try things with the football which would normally make the most conservative NRL coaches foam at the mouth.
The US captain Mark Offerdahl, Queensland-raised and with an American father, said it best of anyone I heard in the countdown to the tournament’s start.
“If they don’t like international rugby league, don’t bloody watch it,’’ Offerdahl said.
“We don’t care. We aren’t asking you to. We like it. It’s the people who don’t follow rugby league who whinge about it.
“The World Cup will always be very fast and very attacking football.’’
If it was all a little too fast and attacking for the good of the US team, beaten 58-12 by the Fijians on Saturday in Townsville, then that’s the price to be paid while their squad of 24 with 10 American-based players learn at a high level of the game.
Originally published as TV figures from the first weekend of the World Cup show plenty of support for tournament