Clash of the Titans

Australia is a country that loves its sports, especially if an Australian is involved. The World Cup of rugby league has just finished being played in Australia. Rugby League is one version of the game of rugby, it was invented one hundred years ago to speed up some elements of the game. The problem with the world cup of rugby league is that nobody else really plays it. The world cup roster reads like a who’s not who in international sport. Well, not really, but if you look at the countries that are represented, many of the bigger countries have very few players in the field. In fact so few people outside of Australia play rugby league that they have had to alter the rules of eligibility to allow Australians to play for countries in which they have their ancestry, even as far back as their grandparents. This world cup is designed for one purpose only, that is to extract more money out of rugby mad aussies. The field looked like this: the top tier included Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and England. The bottom tier was Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, France, Ireland and Scotland. The top team in the bottom tier got a chance to play in the semi-final against the top team in the top tier while the other semi final was the second place team against the third place team. The tournament was so lopsided that Australia went into the semi-final against Fiji and beat them 52-0. Afterwards the media were referring to the triumph of the Fiji side for only losing by this much, that they won a spiritual victory.

Problem is, Australia had beaten everybody so badly that nobody really cared anymore. This event went on for a month and the attendance and ratings just continually fell as the Aussies beat everybody they saw by huge margins. I can’t even think of a sport that we play at a professional level in Canada that nobody else really plays. I suppose the lasting images of Eddie the Eagle competing for Britain in the ski jump in Calgary is an appropriate analogy. You have an Olympics in which the best in the world compete and then for some reason you let in other folk just to round out the field. It is good for a novelty but in the end the lack of competition just sort of degrades everyone. I guess women’s hockey is an appropriate comparison. There are two good teams in the world, a few mediocre ones and then a bunch of really bad teams. If you held a tournament and called it a world cup, that would be like the rugby league world cup. In the semi-final, pitting Canada against China or some other non hockey power would be equivalent. The sports media were funny over the course of the tournament; in the same breath they would rave about the play of the Australian side while lamenting the lack of competition. One headline noted that the play of a particular individual was brilliant but in being brilliant he single handedly put the nail in the coffin for the respectability of the whole tournament.

Australian rules football is even more peculiar to the shores of Australia. There really isn’t anyone else who would be available to play even in a marginal world cup. As such, in order to have some sort of international competition, the all stars of the Australian Football League plays a couple of games against the best players in Gaelic football. The kicker is that these games are significantly different, so serious concessions have to be made. Originally the crossover games were played with one half played using Aussie rules and the other half with Gaelic rules, but this turned out to be not very fair, so they have come up with some sort of hybrid. Of course the balls are different shapes and so they had to choose one to use for this exhibition. Anyway, the game doesn’t really mean much to anybody since there is no particular title they are playing for, but tempers do flare. Apparently the games were cancelled last year because there were too many brawls the year previous. Since nobody really understands the rules and nobody really cares about the outcome, the one thing they can agree upon is the satisfying feeling of fist on cheek. A bizarre sport to watch to be sure.

As a footnote, after much ballyhoo, the final of the World Cup of Rugby League was played with the bookies calling for Australia to win by 30 points. Nobody watched on television, but it turned out to be an inspiring win for New Zealand, shocking and humiliating the national pride of Australia. I could have watched but didn’t because the semi final was so lop sided. Ah well, I shall learn from this and when the Canadian women’s hockey team plays Eddie the Eagle in a hybrid of hockey and ski jumping, I will tune in, just because you never know.