Cricket is Australia's national Sport.
The English teams were throwing the ball about (often dropping it) because they couldn't break down the defense any other way.

Poor old Canberra.....




Cricket is the national sport of Australia. AFL is the most supported winter sport, followed by the NRL. Football is 3rd and currently has a lower average attendance than the Perth Wildcats Basketball team.....


Money and the way that our game is managed by the clubs who are only interested in their own survival, rather than having any long term strategies in place.
22 years ago we were the only professional Rugby with a new Million Pound TV deal and an exciting product.........now we're the "other rugby" with a cheap TV deal, a questionably boring product (see thread on these boards) and our crowds are dwindling and all the SL chairmen can do is think of ways to line their own pockets (see Hull v Wigan) or postulate about how they are going to challenge other sports (see Pearsons claims about Union).....

RU had 50 PE teachers from across UAE doing training sessions in the classroom and on the field in January, they also have over 50 training sessions for L1-L3 in Dubai in 2018 planned or taken place already at various age groups.
We are so far behind it's depressing.

Manchester United
Manchester City
Liverpool
Everton

This is why, Manchester andMerseyside are predomintly football supported areas, little interest in rugby league.

I did say states, sorry I should have included ACT Canberra

Rugby League is a big sport in Australia commanding great TV viewing figures.

The problem is that our sport lends itself more to TV viewers than attending because there are only a few occasions where the 'atmosphere' at a game gets above "luke warm"......AFL on the other hand is watched by immense crowds of rabid Victards who cheer, chant, proffer racist opinions and generally behave like inbred bogans.

The Newest AFL team, Western Sydney average 13,200...this is almost the same or greater than Cronulla, St George, Souths, Wests, Penrith and Manly whilst the Swans average 33,400.....which is more than the best supported team in the NRL and more than double than the best supported side in Sydney.
By Contrast, the Melbourne Storm don't attract as many fans as the worst supported AFL outfit in Victardia.....

...AFL is an abomination of a sport where the 2 main skills, Catching and Kicking straight are performed with almost comical ineptitude, but yet people will roll up to watch it in massive numbers....more people attended 11 Richmond AFL home games last year than did Newcastle, Cronulla, New Zealand and South Sydney over 48 games......The sport is a turd, but christ on a bike they are expert TURD POLISHERS

I don't like AFL but there's no point belittling it. The only thing I find bizarre is how inaccurate they are generally with kicking over any distance, particularly from an uncontested mark.

Apart from the obvious troll nature of the OP did anyone really expect any of the teams to go to Aus at the height of summer and see them turn over 3 top NRL sides on their own turf. Seriously!

Over all I think all 3 clubs did OK without exactly excelling. Jean you're a very silly person.

And you would have heard that it was the Aussies first hit out whilst Hull & Wigan have had numerous pre season friendlies and 2 SL games. As I said, don't read anything into it. It was a way of trying different combinations of players. Its the same as the pre season derby Hull & Rovers have. Nothing to read into it but a chance to blow off cobwebs.

Summer is nearly over.
St George and Souths are not "Top" NRL sides according to where they finished last year.

Souths and St George games were friendlies with plenty of youngsters given a run.
The Storms tearing a new bunger for Leeds was a more telling game.

I was quite happy with the Hull game, we played a lot of young forwards who showed aggression and physicality - Jordan Lane, Turgut, Fash and Matongo. I thought we showed glimpses of attacking threat with Kelly, Connor and Shaul, so overall nothing lost by going over there really, and they will have a few days off and get ready to go against Cas on Saturday

In Manchester there is far more going on than just footy and there is still room for a SL team who could attract a decent crowd. Manchester Rangers were simply unfortunate in being stopped from being promoted as the title challengers were given the points instead after a frozen pitch stopped a game and they went up instead. But there’s still the backing there for at least the Championship long term and I think that’s where they’ll end up fairly soon. They already get crowds as big as clubs four and five divisions above.

But other than that RU is big in Manchester. Believe it or not Manchester was a rugby city up until the time City won the city’s first ever football trophy in 1904 (there’s a book by Gary James coming out about that soon). For decades before then Manchester RUFC was the city’s biggest sporting club. There are countless amateur RU clubs, could be upwards of twelve, dotted all around Manchester and Trafford. In six years there has been enough investment from the RFU to get teams at a number of junior age groups at Wythenshwe RUFC when there weren’t even any links to RU in Wythenshawe before then.

The city has more than enough people to count as a huge player pool but Mancunians RL and Manchester Rangers aren’t big enough names and probably don’t employ enough staff to reach across the conurbation yet. Outside a few postcodes in Salford you wouldn’t know Salford Red Devil’s existed across this conurbation (they may well be a city in their own right but they are part of the Manchester Metropolis and share a city centre with Manchester and Trafford). The RFL aren’t getting into schools like the RFU are neither. Swinton play in Sale now and do get into the Messenger and MEN newspapers but I’m not sure they get into the schools or amateur clubs in Manchester and Trafford.

I don’t know about how big RU is in Liverpool but I bet they have a similar situation has here.

The RFL are missing out big time on these two cities. It’s not that their efforts at Magic Weekends, Grand Finals and a Four Nations Final wasn’t attended by locals. Many of us went to Magic at the Etihad each year it was there and many of us attend the GF at Old Trafford every year. But it’s the grassroots where it is most important to entice and develop new players, not the highest echelons of the game (even though the citizens of both cities enjoy and attend those big games).