Did you know you can still get a ticket for £20 to see England vs New Zealand and Australia vs Fiji at Wembley next week? Those are the three best and four hardest Rugby League sides in the world, probably the biggest concentration of all-round athleticism you’re ever likely to encounter. It’s a pity the web site is the biggest fucking UX hot mess ever. Ah, the professional code, never change. We’re still a bunch of fucking amateurs.
That said I was quite pleased with England this weekend. Looking at the score you might think “disappointing, didn’t thump France, will be rolled up like a carpet by the Kiwis”. But France have been pretty decent through the tournament and they were much more of a challenge than I thought. In general, it’s been a great World Cup – not too many mismatches like 1995, no organisation chaos like 2000.
I think France are still underachieving really. They have 7 or 8 experienced players from Catalans, one of the top 5 Super League sides over the past few years, and other Super League players like Fages, yet they only scraped past Papua New Guinea, were thrashed by New Zealand and beaten by Samoa.
It has been a very good World Cup, some very close matches among the ‘lesser’ nations and good crowds. To get 7000+ to Bristol to watch USA vs Cook Islands was amazing, and I was pleased to be among over 18,000 at Headingley to see NZ-PNG, which was always likely to be very one-sided. I think we could just do with one or two more countries to give the big three a closer game.