SEAN MCGUIRE: We are always up against Australia’s depth in numbers

Nov 13 2008 by Sean McGuire, Liverpool Daily Post

ENGLAND have 80 minutes to save their Rugby League World Cup campaign from calamity on Saturday when they face New Zealand in the semi-final.

A defeat in that game will signal the end of a catastrophic campaign which has failed in almost every way to meet the high hopes of the England coach, Tony Smith, his players and the confident forecasts of the, UK-based, rugby press.

It is difficult to understand why England have been so poor without looking at the fundamental questions about the real state of health of the English game.

Because of its narrow geographical base, English rugby league has a relatively small player pool when compared with Australian rugby league, which is a very popular sport in the big eastern seaboard cities in Australia and the surrounding hinterlands.

The reason the Australian team can call upon five or six players of the very highest quality in each position on the field at international level is not because of some innate superiority.

It is simply because at every stage in the player cycle – from kids through to the top guys in the NRL – they have more people playing the game and therefore more people come through the system and get to the highest level of achievement, a Kangaroo jumper.

We have always been able to produce a team that can compete with the Aussies for one game out of three in a series and we have had individual players, such as Alex Murphy, Ellery Hanley and Martin Offiah, who have been better than their Aussie counterparts.

But for over 40 years the Australians have had the whip hand over us at Test level and there is very little chance of that changing in the immediate future.

However it is not all doom and gloom as the games that have been played for the fourth semi-final spot have been compelling.

Ireland’s victory over Samoa was one of the greatest upsets in the history of international sport, never mind rugby league.

The winners of that game were scheduled to travel from Sydney up to the Gold Coast for the next game. And so confident were the tournament organisers that Samoa would win, they had printed the travel arrangements in the names of the Samoan players.

Fiji's win against France was a triumph for the kind of sheer exhilaration that Fijians bring to rugby league. Their victory against Ireland in the qualifying semi-final is being heralded as the moment when league overtakes union as the top game in Fiji.

However, despite the skill on show from the other nine nations, it has been impossible not to be dazzled by the skill, speed, size, technical ability and awesome power of the Australian three-quarters.

I am certain that we are now watching a set of players of whom great things will be written in the future and I am also even more certain that the combination of Thurston and Lockyer at half-back and that of Falou and Inglis in the centres is by far the best in world rugby, of either code.

There has been nothing to suggest that New Zealand or England can stop Australia retaining the trophy.

But sport is both unpredictable and emotional and we should all gather around our TV sets on Saturday morning to cheer on the England team when they play New Zealand in the semi final at Brisbane.

Let’s hope that they can do it and that Maghull-born James Graham will play his full part in leading the England forwards and lay the platform for a famous English victory.

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