The new Beccy Wilson article that will not be printed after Saturday night
Article from: The Daily Telegraph
By Rebecca Wilson
The Kangaroos was comprehensively humiliated by New Zealand in the NRL World Cup this week.
In what can only be described as an embarrassing performance, the carefully constructed masquerade around the NRL was fractured.
Read more on the match here.
The truth is that Australian Rugby League is not up to scratch and only one or two players who represent Australia as Kangaroos are good enough to compete on the international stage.
Scratch the surface of the sport at every level and you come up with a code that is in grave danger of going the same way as basketball did a decade ago.
The NRL has served to make the sport's problems even worse. The NRL is looking at creating more teams at a time when crowds are already thinning.
Creating more NRL teams will dilute the talent even more, annoying fans and ensuring the demise of the entire competition.
The existing sides have barely enough talent to field a good team. The players they do have are decent athletes but they lack the technical ability of players at the same stage of their careers competing internationally.
Australia is widely acknowledged as producing decent players. Those who are great learned from the Kiwis.
Australia has no real League culture. Sure, there are pockets of the country that live and breathe it but it is not systemic. Unlike footlball, rugby league does not have coaching structures in place that ensure the development of good players with finely honed skills.
It is no coincidence that the best Australian players leave here around the age of 23. The likes of Sonny Bill fled to Europe, knowing they would be taught technical skills that simply are not taught by Australian coaches.
Many more players are now doing the same thing, leaving the level down from the NRL seriously depleted and lacking in any real talent.
The young blokes travelling to Europe rarely return as fully fledged seniors to the NRL. Only a handful of players in the domestic competition learned their trade. They are home-grown and home-coached, which is why their skills are seriously lacking.
The capitulation by Australia against New Zealand showed us just how far behind the rest of the world the NRL clubs are. The sport must surely realise there are gaping holes in League coaching and management that must be addressed.
Switch from an NRL game over to world cup one and the contrasts could not be more marked. The game played everywhere else is fast and skilful. The NRL version is stodgy and slow.
One of the most sobering facts is that Australia has never had higher participation rates at junior level. There are just as many NRL players here as there are in the Netherlands.
The reality is that, while the Kiwis produce dozens of stars year after year, very few young Australian blokes emerge from local competitions as star players.
The NRL is the only winter football code in Australia. While it may have been a good idea to move it away from the more competitive summer market, crowd figures must surely be telling the sport's bosses that something is wrong.
Either the game does surgery on itself here or RL faces a future that is very bleak indeed. Once this crop of not so talented Kangaroos retires, the next lot down don't look too flash.
The juggernaut that threatened to come from the last World Cup campaign has failed to materialise. Rugby League is in crisis and the Kangaroos horrendous loss at the weekend proved once and for all that something has to be done to fix it.
