That was the World Cup that was

[undyingking]

Well, England's World Cup is over, and a pretty chastening experience it's been. They scraped past Papua New Guinea in the first game -- fair enough, adjusting to climate etc. They were crushed by Australia in the second game -- fair enough, Australia are the heavy favourites. Then they were beaten convincingly by New Zealand in the third game -- oh dear. And then they were beaten by New Zealand again, not quite as convincingly but still quite so, in the semi-final. This is the same New Zealand who England beat 3-0 just last year, when Tony Smith's arrival as coach was greeted with hosannas. Every game was marred with English handling and positional errors, and some of our alleged major talents (Sinfield, Price) didn't perform at all, while others (Senior, Morley, even Wellens) seem now past their best, without the same quality of young players coming through. In general you would have backed this England team to lose to any of the strong Super League teams, which is a bit of an indictment of the quantity of foreigners in our club rugby. Gardner's been brilliant for St Helens outside Gidley: Burrow and McGuire have created wonderful tries for Donald at Leeds. But surrounded just by Englishmen, the effect is not at all the same.

Rugby League is in danger of becoming a joke sport at international level, if it isn't already. The World Cup was delayed for four years to give England and NZ a chance to catch up, then rigged as heavily as possible to try and make it into a contest, but it failed -- Australia have still waltzed through without breaking a sweat. We can only hope that NZ somehow manage to give them a game in Saturday's final: but realistically, a scoreline of 40-6 or something like that is probably par.