After losing the Four Nations final, are Australia gearing up for an Ashes tour?

After Shaun Johnson’s impish match-winning performance for New Zealand united the non-Australian rugby league world in a feast of schadenfreude last Saturday, the NRL made an astonishing about-turn. Only a few weeks after putting the kibosh on a Great Britain tour of Australia in 2015, they pronounced their desire for a return to tours. Some Australian media swallowed this absurd revisionism unquestioningly, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph even toasting the NRL’s sudden expansionist ideals and plans for a “union-style Lions tour”.

In reality, the NRL concluded that tours are more lucrative than the Four Nations, which makes you wonder why they have not managed to stage one since the 1992 Ashes tour. The last touring team in the UK was the Kiwis in 2002. A GB Lions tour looks likely to finally go ahead in 2018, with the NRL leadership hoping a full-blooded Ashes tour will put more bums on seats than the Four Nations, which averaged 20,000, ironically celebrated last week as the “most successful” tournament.

Hardly figures to yell from the rooftops. Mind you, the Australian board had to give away so many tickets to apathetic Sydneysiders to get a gate of 25,000 for the Anzac test in May that the event actually lost money. Contrarily, Wollongong was packed to the rafters for Australia’s match against Samoa earlier this month.

It will be intriguing to see which venues the NRL and RFL choose for the 2016 Four Nations. As it is not an RLIF event, commerce will win out over development. Scotland coach Steve McCormack has called for a double-header opener at either Murrayfield or Wembley. The thought of Scotland v New Zealand or England in front of 15,000 at Tynecastle is also an engaging one. It is no further-fetched than the same number turning up in the isolated rugby league desert of Dunedin to watch the Kiwis see off England.

Scotland are extremely keen to return to Galashiels for a game in 2015. The Borders showed an appetite for “event rugby” that has been missing in Glasgow and Edinburgh, where all of Scotland’s previous home games have been held. A paying crowd of around 1,400 made something entirely new somehow feel traditional: a local crowd, huddled around the pitch on a dark Friday night in a rugby heartland, roaring on the home side.

The half-time parade of local heroes of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s – David Rose, George Fairbairn, Bob Valentine, Stan and Ron Cowan – helped sprinkle some magic. France will play England in mid-season next year (before hosting the touring Kiwis), and then both home and away in 2016, when they will otherwise be kicking their heels after failing to hang on to their enormous lead in Galashiels.

The talk of Scotland being the Four Nations whipping boys may be a little premature, although none of the previous “fourth nations” – France, Papua New Guinea, Wales or Samoa – won a game in 15 attempts. But before the NRL and RFL dispose of the concept, they should take a look at how union expanded their elite European international competition. After a victorious opening game, Italy lost 33 of their next 36 matches in the Six Nations. Now they are by no means guaranteed the wooden spoon. Italy’s record against the world’s big four is played 59, lost 59. And, after their close shave with glory on Saturday night, Scotland have yet to beat the All Blacks in 30 attempts. That didn’t stop a huge crowd descending on Murrayfield, nor a lucrative TV deal. Rugby league should learn the patient game.

Foreign quota

While professional clubs in England are back in pre-season training already, the season is cranking up in France, where many of Les Chanticleers have returned to domestic action after their failed European campaign. But it was veteran Maxime Gresque who stole the show last weekend with a glorious solo try to win the big one between top two Carcassonne and Toulouse. Strangely, the only member of either of the runaway title-chasers in Richard Agar’s France team against Scotland was former St George and Parramatta forward Aaron Wood – not to be confused with his fellow Australian, shaggy-haired prop and recent international debutant Aaron Woods – with Carcassonne’s Clement Soubeyras injured in the warm-up.

Livewire half-back Remy Marginet, who was a point-hauling revelation against Scotland, is pulling the strings for Catalan village club Palau, who continue to defy gravity in mid-table despite losing at home to bottom club Avignon. The Bisons finally secured their first win at the ninth attempt, London Broncos’ flop Tony Gigot – damagingly effective against Scotland – among the scorers.

Clubcall: Southgate College

This month marks 10 years since rugby league started at Southgate College, a further education seat in north London. What began with just three players, and rarely topped 13 in the first few years in which yours truly ran the programme, has flourished into a dual-code rugby nursery under the tender nurturing of staff from the college and their partner clubs, London Skolars and Saracens.

The early years saw Southgate make several 400-mile round-trips on a rickety old minibus to Leeds, Hull and Castleford to gain a taste of real rugby league. We also played at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, Salford Reds and in Italy. Southgate ended up producing several solid semi-pros such as Dennis Tuffour (formerly of Hunslet and Doncaster), Smokie Junor and Jaroslaw Obuchowski (at Skolars), Aaron Small and Eddie M’Baraga (now at Hemel). It is as ethnically inclusive and socially diverse as any club gets, embracing all and sundry. Now called Barnet and Southgate College, they are stronger than ever. Happy birthday Southgate RL.

Goal-line drop-out

While Dan Sarginson, his inside man at Wigan, exploded on to the world scene in the last month, England squad member Joe Burgess was left to watch and learn from the sidelines. Wigan’s lethal left-wing combination could well be reunited for England in the near future, something neither of them would have predicted this time last year.

“We’ve come a long way,” says Sarginson. “Early in the season we seem to spend every video session justifying what we’d done wrong!” Burgess did pick up the Albert Goldthorpe Rookie of the Year award last week and has a huge fan in his centre Sarginson – Hertfordshire’s first England international, following two for Scotland. “Joe’s only young but he’s got unbelievable raw talent. He reads the game well, he’s amazing in the air and for a tall player you don’t expect him to be so fast. He’s a player for the future.”

Fifth and last

In the month that the USA celebrate 60 years since the first ever game of rugby league on their land – New Zealand v Australia at Long Beach on 27 November 1954, read all about it in No Helmets Required – they (and Sierra Leone) have become part of Europe. Well, members of the RL European Federation anyway.

Their development should be safe in the RLEF’s hands while moves to establish Atlantic and Middle East-Africa federations continue. The USARL’s first major event as the new governing body will be a fiesta in Florida as Leeds return to Jacksonville in January, facing the US Pioneers, a domestic representative team. Meanwhile, thanks to the heroic work of Romeo Monteith and his colleagues, Jamaica now has two divisions in their league. Our game is booming in the most unlikely of places. That M62 corridor is getting rather long.

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