Expect a fan-friendly experience at next year's Rugby League World Cup

With six of next season’s Premier League stadiums hosting games, no one can accuse Rugby League World Cup 2021 of not aiming high. If it all goes to plan, this should be the biggest and best tournament the sport has ever seen. Within minutes of unveiling the fixture list on Tuesday morning, World Cup wallcharts started dropping through people’s letterboxes 500 days before the three tournaments – men’s, women’s and wheelchair – kick off. This level of pre-planning is unheard of in most sports and extraordinary in rugby league.

With 61 games, 21 teams and 21 venues, there was potential for a scattergun approach, but instead there is order and logic. Hosts England will open at Newcastle on 23 October before heading to Bolton and Sheffield; while Hull, Coventry and St Helens will get to see the world champion Kangaroos. “It was logistical jigsaw and some teams will have to move around more than others,” said Jon Dutton, the chief executive of the events. “But each team will live in a basecamp during the week and that will be their home, immersing them in the local community.”

Most of the women’s and wheelchair teams will spend their whole group stage at the same venue (Leeds, York, Sheffield and London’s Copper Box), while nine men’s teams will play two group games in one stadium. While there were few obvious cultural fits between local authorities hosting teams and the various diasporas, Jamaica will be one of three teams who will be at home in Leeds, Newcastle will also become familiar to three teams, St Helens host Tonga (both coached by Kristian Woolf), Leigh will see plenty of Lebanon, and Greece can look forward to the delights of Doncaster.

That worked a trick at the 2013 World Cup, when Scotland were taken to the hearts of the folk of Workington. This time around they will be based in Newcastle, forming part of an opening weekend double-header: England v Samoa on the Saturday at St James’ Park, Scotland v Italy on Sunday at Newcastle Thunder’s Kingston Park.

The double-header theme runs throughout the three tournaments, with 16 scheduled, and with successive games within 24 hours in the same area on many more occasions, this is the most fan-friendly schedule possible. World Cup tourists will be able to pack in games.

Dutton was keen to learn from the 2017 tournament in Australasia where games only took place over the weekend and consequently media coverage sagged badly in midweek. “We learned from 2013 that big games work best at weekends, and we want to continue that interest and keep that feeling going through the week. So there are matches on nearly every day.”

While the organisers are targeting event-goers for the quarter-final at Anfield, semi-final at Arsenal and the double-header final at Old Trafford, they will also push ticket packages, such as for all three games at St Helens.

By opening with the first and second seeds in each group meeting, organisers have done all they can to ensure exciting games to kickstart the tournament. “The rugby union World Cup grappled with one-sided scores, and it was the same in the early stages of the Netball World Cup,” said Dutton. “Yes, there will be some, but moving from 14 teams to 16 is a step towards maturity we had to take. Explaining a 14-team tournament to a non-core audience was really hard. Every sports fan understands a 16-team World Cup.”

Dutton accepts that the cancellation of the Ashes series (and European Championship) this autumn “makes the job harder” to reach potential event-goers. “There’s just not enough international rugby league played and it’s hard not having it to show.” England will arrive at the World Cup having hardly played for three years.

The draw presents a distinct possibility that England will be the only European team in the quarter-finals. “Jamaica against Ireland and then Ireland-Lebanon will be critical games,” said Dutton. “Scotland and Wales are in tough groups but if they don’t make it, it won’t damage us in anyway. The athletes will decide who qualifies.”

Every World Cup seems to have a random venue. In 2000 there were several – from Reading to Belfast – and in 2013 it was Bristol. Next year that role goes to Middlesbrough, where the Riverside Stadium’s 35,000 seats will take some filling even for the titanic clash between 2017 semi-finalists Tonga and the Cook Islands. And, after the qualified success of the 2016 Four Nations at Coventry, Australia and Scotland will return to the Ricoh Arena in the only men’s group game being played outside the Northern Powerhouse.

Somewhat surprisingly, there will be some midweek afternoon kick-offs, drawing inspiration from the Netball World Cup, which saw school parties pack arenas. What would otherwise have been one of the hardest sells – Greece v France – is now taking place during half-term. It will surely be the most fun anyone has had on a Monday afternoon in October in Doncaster.

Clubcall: Toronto Wolfpack

The sudden disappearance of the Wolfpack from this year’s Super League is a culmination of a maelstrom of unfortunate incidents, some of them avoidable. Taken one by one, each could have been dealt with. With hindsight, given the Covid-19 travel restrictions, Super League could have followed Super Rugby’s lead and made 2020 an English-only season, with no relegation. Unable to play at home, with no access to furlough payments in the UK or Canada and no Sky funding, Toronto were in a financial straitjacket from which even the strongest clubs would struggle to escape.

With a track record of not paying bills on time, including their own players, and half a dozen stars having to leave the country due to visa issues, pulling out was understandable, albeit a PR catastrophe.

With no guarantee of a place in any division next season, and all current players told they can move on, where that leaves the club or their 2021 recruits James Bell, Ben Flower and, rumour had it, Ryan Hall, is anyone’s guess. It surely won’t do the incoming Ottawa Aces much good either.

Foreign quota

Championship clubs are already clamouring to take Toronto’s place in Super League. Toulouse Olympique should be top of the waiting list. They have the stadium, the team and the potential: and a second French team should bring a TV deal. L’Équipe TV have stepped in to broadcast Catalans’ games in England during August following BeIn Sports’ withdrawal. L’Équipe may sign up for the full Sky package for the rest of the season and film games in Perpignan for Sky. They could even deem the sport worthy of coverage in the paper again.

Goal-line drop-out

A former rugby league player is designing a laser to use on his own brain. Yes, you read that correctly. Neil Verner, who played for amateur clubs around the Wakefield area, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease four years ago at the age of 48.

“It’s currently very much about palliative care and preparing for the graveyard,” Verner told League Express. “There was no way I was going to simply resign myself to the situation.” Verner just happens to be a doctor of quantum physics as well as an inventor. “From my knowledge of subatomic physics I knew there had to be a solution,” said Verner, who is working on findings from the US to establish trans-cranial laser treatment he can try out on himself. “I know how to cure this – and I’m going to cure it.” Verner, given the ironic nickname ‘Nasty’ in his playing days, is aiming to raise £95,000.

Fifth and last

Most players would reach 28 and assume their career has peaked. Not Andrew Davey. The Australian second rower was handed his NRL debut last weekend by Parramatta Eels. He had earned it, working his way up through Queensland Cup with Mackay Cutters and Townsville Blackhawks before signing for the Eels last year and impressing in their NSW Cup side, Wentworthville Magpies. His friends and family drove 15 hours south to see the historic moment and he rewarded them with a lovely offload for the Eels’ final try of the game. There is hope for us all. Well, some of us.

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source: theguardian.com