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.

Comments

[theo]

The quality of play on Saturday was no better than can be seen when the amateur Ipswich Rhinos play at Humber Doucy Lane. The sponsors must be dissatisfied.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

It's been interesting to watch the Australians having to stifle their usual desire to crow, because even they realize it's bad for the game long-term if there's no real opposition.

Mm, I keep meaning to go up there and take in a Rhinos game -- it's ages since I saw any live league.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Rugby League is in danger of becoming a joke sport at international level, if it isn't already.

Mmmmm-m-m-m-m-m. I don't think Rugby League has necessarily moved backwards at all, but it's clear how far it has to go before it becomes a world sport. I think this World Cup is actually a very neat solution if you interpret the competition as an A World Cup, with four teams, and a B World Cup, with six teams, and the meeting of the twain is a little pointless.

How many genuine world team sports are there? I discard ad-hoc teams-of-individual-players competitions like the Davis Cup in tennis, the various team golf competitions (though the Ryder Cup transcends golf) and even the team athletics competitions. (I wouldn't even count the relay events on the track, though they're close.)

1. Association football.
2. Basketball, terrible game that it is.
3. Rugby union and ice hockey.
4. Baseball and, probably, field hockey, but I'm guessing where it should be placed - maybe it should be up there with ice hockey. Cricket's probably on about this level too, comparing the lack of strength in depth around the #10-to-#16 mark of the Cricket World Cups and the World Baseball Classic.
5. Things like netball, volleyball and handball. And curling.
Lots - 1. American Football.
Lots. Rugby league.
Lots + 1. Gaelic/Australian/International Rules Football.

I haven't thought about this very much - there's a post in it, but it would need some proper RESEARCH - and now I'm off to bed.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Things like netball, volleyball and handball (I guess water polo too) are a bit of a mystery to me -- for all I know there could be huge international competitions going on all the time, just unreported in the media I follow. So for me they could be anywhere from 5 to (Lots - 2). (Which is admittedly a bit of an academic distinction ;-)

I think I would put League above gridiron though, just because at least it does actually have frequent international competition, among several different national teams. Even if mostly one-sided, I think the organization of those must be a big tick in the "genuine international sport" box.

Another discriminator might be "in how many countries are there fully professional teams?" League can manage 4 (5 soon if you count Wales) -- gridiron the USA, Canada and Japan only? Although on that basis, I don't think there are any professional field hockey teams in the world at all. Hmm.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I agree: American football is in no sense an international sport, and I say this as a fan.

For one crucial thing, there is no international agreement what the rules are: the pitch size and scoring system are different between NFL and CFL. There is no international organisation representing the sport, unless you count the NFL itself.

So even if you wanted to have an international match, you'd have to somehow form two national teams and agree the rules of the encounter.

That said, the NFL may well have fans in more countries than League does. I'm pretty confident more non-Americans watch the Super Bowl than people watched the world cup final. But that's just distribution: on those criteria you could argue that 24 is an international TV show.