The Other World Cup
What World Cup???
This weekend here in Australia is the Rugby League World Cup. Apart from a bit of advertising on Channel 9 here there is very little coverage of it.
It features a massive 10 teams in 3 pools. I think the organisers are so worried about the domination of the top 3 nations (Australia, New Zealand and England) that they have put them all in the same pool. I have no interest in working out how the next round goes.
Is this World Cup relevant?? I suppose to the Rugby League fraternity it is very relevant and they want it to be successful and have more competitive nations. However on a World scale it is very limited in its exposure and appeal. If Australia loose it will be a shock defeat.
In almost all countries apart from Australia, League is not the dominant football code. New Zealand is totally dominated by that other game, Rugby Union. Another World Cup where a dozen nations turn up and it will be between maybe 4 nations as to who wins it.
Cricket has about 6 competitive nations, although it is big amongst 1/4 of th
e Worlds population. There is even talk of 20-20 Cricket becoming an Olympic Sport.
Americans call the winners of their domestic, Baseball, Basketball, Ice Hockey and Gridiron competitions, “World Champions”. They don’t even invite anyone else from around the world to play except for Canada.
In Football we have 200+ nations playing matches for up to 2 years just to qualify fir the FIFA World Cup where 32 nations battle it out to be World Champions.
South AFrica 2010, here we come
Cheers
Tezza
October 22 2008 09:53 pm | General
