www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 5943405390

www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 5943405390

It's Britain you illiterate fool.

Also anyone who takes any notice of what Dean Ritchie says doesn't deserve the time of day.

What this tells me is that the writer and contributors don’t have a clue about the history of international Rugby League

The article tells us that “Since 1972, Australia and Britain have met 59 times - the Poms have won just 12 of those games!”

Then later, “The gap between the two nations widened significantly during the 1982 Kangaroos' unbeaten tour of England. Until that point, Britain had at least remained competitive”

Remained competitive? The overall ashes test results between Great Britain and Australia stands at 59 wins to Australia and 55 to Great Britain. Australia didn’t win an Ashes series from 1920 until 1950, I would say that is more than competitive... did Great Britain say that the bumbling Kangaroos were killing international Rugby League for the three decades they couldn’t beat Great Britain?

A well researched piece, I see.

11,000 fans to watch your world beaters..........I would suggest that Australia and their fans aren't exactly helping

But then the thickos claim that because we're not up to scratch the games are boring and one sided. Sydney-siders are just full of themselves. Had that game been played in Townsville or Brisbane there would have been a much bigger crowd.

Some are claiming it was a low crowd becuse it was raining

9 NRL teams within spitting distance of the game and yet only 11,000 roll up

Simple fact is that the marketing for the game was non-existant.....whereas in Wellington, there was a fairly big push over the last few weeks and therefore attracted a bigger crowd than the Crusaders managed in S14 all season.....

The NRL need to get a second NZ franchise in place as soon as possible......the 20,000+ at the cake tin on Saturday would all be back on a regular basis for decent League.......why not kick out cronulla...they bring nothing to the game

Sorry but what, exactly is there to disagree with? GB/England are not competitive. We haven't beaten Australia in a 'must-win' game for 30+ years. Our lack of competitiveness is not Australia's fault. They could relax the dumb Origin rule and let people play for Qld/NSw and not Australia, but apart from that (which really only affects NZ) the only thing that will bring international RL back to life is a competitive England.

Whilst we continue to have loads of meidocre imports and coach players so badly that our centres look like they've never even heard of setting up a winger let alone done it, we haven't had a decent halfback since Goulding, and our defence is torn apart by what are very basic plays, we'll continue to get the same results. And every year before the tournament starts we'll hear more nonsense about how great our pack is.

Loads....International RL was fine for 30 yrs when Australia had their (-)rses handed to them by GB and it is fine now. What the game needs is more than 3 countries with a chance of winning the RLWC.........and that ain't going to happen any time soon....and it's nobody's fault.
I would suggest that if you removed Australia, New Zealand and England from the RLWC you might actually end up with a pretty decent competition...and quite evenly balanced......in fact I would go as far as to suggest it......let the big 3 play their own tri-nations comp whilst the rest play in a world cup that any one of 10 teams could win.....and if the Australian Public can't be bothered turning up, then play it in the UK along the M62 corridor with tickets starting at 10 quid each.

11,000 was the total number of people who went through the turnstiles on the day. An eyewitness said there was never more than 8,000 for the Aussie game. The other 3,000 odd left after the Samoa v Tonga game.

And then people wonder why RL can't compete internationally with the other rugby code.........

to the more ignorant people on this thread, when england were a strong side ie 60s and before we would get test match crowds of 40,000 - 60,000.

the slump in interest here comes because you have been awful for 40 years.

getting 80,000 to a test in sydney is achievable for a strong england side