With rugby league showing more commitment to international competition this weekend than at any time in the modern era, it might be time to assess the state of the game in that arena.

The new NRL administration clearly sees international competition – at club and Test level – as a potential area of growth. It has expanded the World Club Challenge, discussed taking NRL games overseas and established academies in the Pacific.

The NRL is helping finance and organise teams from Fiji, Samoa, Papua New Guinea and Tonga this weekend while South Africa, Niue, Lebanon and Malta will also be playing Tests in Sydney. In the past, League Central has also had to pay the Kiwis’ wages – for all I know, it’s doing the same on Friday night.

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These are small steps after 120 years of only patchy interest from rugby league authorities everywhere in expanding a sport which was, conversely, designed specifically to be more attractive than its much more widely played parent code, so the players could be paid.

But most things happening in international rugby league remain outside the NRL’s sphere of information or influence and there is one very worrying trend I would like to identify in this column.

Events in the United Arab Emirates, Italy and South Africa have led me to fear we might soon be left with three – or at least two and a half – codes of rugby in the latest piece of political manoeuvring open to the seemingly endless ranks of disgruntled league officials everywhere.

Let’s start with the most recent imbroglio.

The fledgling UAE rugby league recently announced it would like to host the 2021 World Cup. Not going to happen – but a great publicity stunt that let people know the game is now being played in that country.

The local rugby union authorities were not amused.



They issued a statement saying they were the only body permitted to use the word “rugby”, that these upstarts were abusing their intellectual property and risked being sued.

The league actually changed the names of some teams as it considered its position, but the domestic league is continuing despite the threats.

In way more than half of the countries where rugby union is played, little or nothing is known about rugby league. So when rugby league shows up, the same indignation and victimisation occurs that happened in Australia, New Zealand and England generations ago.

(We can’t compare the current events to what happened in France because the Nazis aren’t around anymore to help rugby union out).

Two years ago, the Rugby League European Federation actually succeeded in getting the International Rugby Board to tell South Africa and Morocco that the 13-man game was a sovereign sport controlled by a separate body and should be left alone.

The IRB told those Federations to stop telling their respective governments rugby league was an unauthorised version of rugby union which was not worthy of any funding.

You’re following this so far, right? So all that needs to happen in the UAE is that the body now known as World Rugby to send a similar letter to its local Federation.

But the problem is this: in Italy, a breakaway rugby league body has just affiliated with the rugby union!



And last I heard, the South Africa Rugby League has been worn down so much by interference from rugby union representatives in the Olympic movement there that they were considering doing likewise.

So at the same time as battling UAE leaguies are trying to prove that the local rahrahs are backwards and barking up the wrong tree, their position is being undermined by their brethren abroad.

How do we get three codes out of this?

Here’s how: This is just an example, right? I have no evidence at all that this is going to happen. But, let’s say the RLIF recognises the Thailand Rugby League and outlaws the rival Thailand Stars, who played Japan on Wednesday.

What is to stop the Thailand Stars, with their sponsors, players and officials, going to the Thai rugby union and saying “we would like to be your 13-a-side and 9-a-side body?”

It gives rugby union a change to legitimately undermine a rival by claiming exactly what the sport has just claimed in the UAE – that rugby is one game, not two.

That is exactly what has now happened in Italy. There are three codes of rugby there, effectively.

Why is that a problem? Well, what does a government official do when he receives an application for funding from two bodies in charge of the same sport, each claiming to be correctly affiliated?



Does he give money to the one aligned with the Rugby League International Federation, of which he knows nothing? Or does he give it to the one aligned with the local rugby union, with which he has dealt before? They run “rugby” here, right? And 13-a-side rugby is still rugby, right?

This is the new, grassroots, Super League War ladies and gentlemen – rugby league bodies so marginalised and angry that they are willing to sleep with the enemy.

And it’s a huge challenge for the incoming RLIF CEO, David Collier. If a renegade league choses to side with its local union, it undermines his organisation enormously by playing on rugby league’s global weaknesses.

A breakaway league can offer players all the perks of being part of a bigger sport – including possible Olympic representation – and save them all the hassles and obstacles of being part of a pioneering movement.

Long term, what if rugby union started running 13-a-side competitions under league rules? Are our rules copyright? Could union reabsorb league, starting in countries where league is unknown and killing off its seeds before working backwards towards the citadels of Parramatta, Headingley and Onehunga in a Hundred Years War?

Three rugby codes, competing for players, sponsors, publicity and government recognition.

It’s a nightmare.

This week Steve is inviting Roarers to follow his Rugby League World Cup news Facebook page and Twitter account @RLWCnews

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