By STEVE MASCORD
BRITISH readers, I am willing to bet, are completely unaware of this. What’s more, I am guessing most of those who are unaware with not care even after I make them aware.
But three Australian National Basketball League teams are currently in the midst of a pre-season trip to the United States where they are playing sides in the National Basketball Association, the NBA.
The Utah Jazz beat the Sydney Kings 103-83, Melbourne United will have played Oklahoma City Thunder by the time you read this and the final game pits the Brisbane Bullets against the Phoenix Suns.
Was I right? You don’t care…
But there are parallels here with the February 17 double-header in our sport at Sydney’s ANZ Stadium when St George Illawarra will play Hull and South Sydney will take on Wigan.
It’s not the same thing, right? It’s not a lesser, satellite league getting a bit of big time, pre-season action to give the big guys a soft run-out….
And we can say that because we have a World Club Challenge, which pits the best Super League team against the best NRL side. The NBA and NBL don’t, and never will, have such a thing. There’s no equality between those two competitions, not even imagined equality.
But the World Club Challenge is reportedly in some jeopardy. Australasian champions the Melbourne Storm didn’t want to travel as runners up in February and as a result we only had one “fair dinkum” World Club Series when it was the top three versus the top three.
There is a big question mark over whether the Storm will want to journey to the UK next year as champions.
Leeds have always shown an interest in playing the WCC Down Under, as Wigan did in 2014. A journalist from the Latrobe Valley in rural Victoria has suggested the region may bid to host the match – bringing to fruition a long-held ambition for the WCC to be a transportable “property” suitable for a neutral venue.
But will the Storm have time for even that in their crowded pre-season schedule?
I struggle to comprehend how we leave a fixture so important to the sport in the hands of the competing clubs. How embarassing is it that a so-called showpiece in our calendar is optional? Yes, the Rugby Football League work hard to make it happen each year but when St George Illawarra asked the NRL in 2010 if the WCC was compulsory, they were told it was not.
And since then Aussie clubs have been like golfers and tennis players, being paid appearance money to make the trip.
Surely a club can’t decide not to compete in the NRL grand final – so why does it have the right not to take part in a world championship game? Does this happen in any other sport, where the match that determines global supremacy is played only if one of the clubs feels like it?
Competing in the World Club Challenges should be part of the participation agreement all NRL clubs sign, it should be a condition of kicking off round one. You have to fulfil fixtures even at amateur level or you face sanctions. The WCC has been a fixture since 2000! How can you be permitted to skip it?
Unless the NRL can be convinced to stand up its clubs and make it compulsory in the interests of the sport, perhaps it’s time to put the concept back in mothballs.
The RFL is doing its own thing in North America, its clubs are gaining a toe-hold in Australia via four games next February and it’s all being done from a commercial standpoint and not out of grovelling. The rugby league world is getting on with life without the NRL and without Sydney which will host just two games in the coming World Cup.
When Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook was asked what he was expecting from Melbourne United in that basketball match he said “I ain’t expect s—“.
We seem to have similar expectations from another club from the same city, and of the NRL in general.
