Cairns is really small. Think they did ok and probably bigger crowds than Northern Pride get.

Interest in PNG and NZ seems good perhaps the whole comp should have been shared between the two nations... would have been interesting to see the community response to a neutral game in PNG

When I was a kid, Australian loved International League with a passion.
I still have old video cassettes of Kangaroo tours - but no way to play them now.
What killed it was no competition.
The first 3 or 4 times we won were great. after that, it didn't seem worth the effort.

oh is that right mr smarty pants??

seems enough of your lot out here after upending their entire lives, leaving home & families etc just to move to the other side of the planet for a little sun & some skin cancer

The idea is to spread the sport out around the country, you just can't play every game at some suburban ehole in sydney

Shark Park you say???

who was going to turn up for a game at shonk park?

My point about Kear was more that we can't keep blaming the Australians for not giving us the attention we think we deserve when the European nations simply can't keep up with the standard they are aspiring to. That's nothing to do with the cost of living in Australia.

Kear has (as, have all British coaches) been involved in elite talent development for the best part of 20 years, and yet we still can't build a competitive side - that's a failure of the game in Europe. Our best talent has to go to Australia to earn a fair salary - that's a failure commercially at club level (although I know people prefer to use the RFL as a lightening rod on that one).

We can't keep blaming the Australians for showing no interest in international RL when we're providing no reason for them to take any interest in us. England hasn't won a single fixture against the Aussies in something like 11 years - I can't think of another sport where arguably it's biggest rivalry is so pathetically one-sided.

Well Queensland won 8 consecutive series in the State of Origin games.

But they weren’t all 3-0 series whitewashs. When did Austrailia last lose a game? The best thing to get Austrailians interested in watching international again would be for Australia to get knocked out in the semi final, that would take some of the arrogance out of them.

Well that's the AB's buggered then isn't it

Having watched Australian touring sides since the early 1960s my thoughts are that whilst they have typically been better athletes than their UK equivalents it's changes to the game which have increasingly allowed them to utilise this to their advantage. For example playing on mud patches in the middle of a UK winter played in our favour. The days of contested scrums and lumbering forwards also favoured us. Finally the introduction of multiple high definition cameras has seen the end of the brutal physopath type of forward which was also a great leveller.

Agree silver - international RL exposes gaps in quality far more than RU. The muddy pitches may have gone from RU, but the ability to play a forward oriented game and starve the opposition of possession means a team with relatively poor backs can beat one with much better backs. Can you imagine the All Blacks backs vs any northern hemisphere team at RL? Wouldn't even be close.

The problem is the Kangaroos are that much better than England, but in RL there's no way to hide the gulf in class. Oddly enough I do give us half a chance in this WC, if NZ can turn the Aussies over. They were looking really good until half time vs Tonga, and they genuinely have a chance vs Aus. Whilst on paper NZ are better than England, we don't have the same mental block with them - most of our players have played and beaten them before.

If the "best side" always won then we'd have a very boring sport.......2008 and the Kiwis had no right to win the game but they did.