Rugby League World Cup 2013 will provide the sport with a true test of its ...

The Rugby Football League is not daft, it knows that its game often struggles

for national press coverage especially in the London-centric broadsheets –

though the pre-tournament coverage of this World Cup must have been

encouraging. And however nostalgic fans feel about 1895 and the associated

struggle, most realise that the way forward is to attract attention in the

south. So the game has quietly evangelised.

The once great hope, the London Broncos, have struggled in recent years,

flick-flacking between identities and currently without a base for their

home games next season. Despite finishing Super League runners-up in 1997

and Challenge Cup runners-up in 1999, they have struggled financially,

finishing second from bottom in Super League last season and suffering a

small haemorrhage of players. But turn your head the other way and there has

been progress: more amateur rugby league is played in the south now than

ever before.

Money has particularly been ploughed into Wales, Bristol and the South West.

The Welsh have made great advances, now providing players for Super League,

and in Bristol the now semi-professional University of Gloucestershire All

Golds work closely with Bristol Sonics, an amateur club named after the

city’s links with the development of Concorde. League has been taken into

both primary and secondary schools where it has received an unexpectedly

warm welcome, and World Cup organisers hope that this enthusiasm will fill

the Memorial Ground for the group game between the USA and the Cook Islands.

The All Golds were one of three new teams accepted into the semi-professional

Championship in 2013 along with Hemel Stags, who have been going for a

couple of decades as an amateur club, and Oxford – who play at Iffley Road

where Roger Bannister made his name.

They join London Skolars, the Harringey club who have been bubbling along at

lower levels since 2002. And the two other Rugby World Cup competitions held

this summer were staged well away from the M62 – the wheelchair competition

in Gillingham and the armed forces at the Colchester Garrison.

Most surprising of all was the 2013 Champions School final, for a long time

the curtain-raiser to the Challenge Cup final at Wembley. In horrible

conditions, RGS High Wycombe beat Castleford Academy to follow the trail

blazed by Surrey’s Howard of Effingham last year. The first two southern

schools to reach the final became the first two to win. As Matt Dawson, the

former England union scrum-half, puts it on the school website: “It’s been a

while since I’ve been asked to write a good luck message for my old school

but if I’m truly honest, doing it for the rugby league team was not the one

I thought would be next.”

None of this means that rugby league has yet won the prize of national

recognition, it is still frequently seen as the scruffy cousin passing by on

the other side of the street, best ignored. But it does prove that it has

some heft – Sky’s Friday night Super League audience is far from exclusively

northern, and ticket sales for the World Cup semi-finals at Wembley are

second only to the final at Old Trafford.

Does that prove that the old divides are breaking down, or just that

southerners are always partial to a big razzle-dazzle sporting event? The

next few weeks, during which league will be given a sustained run on

terrestrial television for the first time since the Super League launch in

1996, should give us a clue. Now, pass us a pie.

Article source: http://www.irb.com/newsmedia/regional/newsid=2069206.html

Incoming search terms:

• rugbycollege co uk usa-determined-to-prove-a-point-in-arc

Rugby League World Cup 2013 will provide the sport with a true test of its ...