Lessons from the past? A Rugby League World Cup without Australia.
What can the Rugby League World Cup learn from a 211cm Serbian?
It depends how deeply you want to read into it. How much of the following is causation and how much is correlation?
Is it purely coincidence that Nikola Jokić was the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the National Basketball Association (NBA) this season, 41 years after the USA boycotted the 1980 Olympics?
The boycott by the United States in 1980 handed the gold medal to the former Yugoslavia, to which Serbia previously belonged.
In fact, if Yugoslavia were still a single nation, it would have – by a significant margin – provided more international players to the NBA in the past four decades than any other country.
Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro and North Macedonia together have produced more than 50 per cent more NBA players than either the former USSR or Canada.
So, what does this have to do with the Rugby League World Cup?
Ask anybody at the coalface, and they will tell you the main thing holding back the Rugby League World Cup from happening in 2021 is not necessarily COVID, but Australia.
More precisely, it is a combination of the nation’s stringent border regulations during the pandemic and a general reluctance by the NRL to permit players to attend this year’s tournament.
While elevated health concerns and subsequent financial considerations make sense (quarantine doesn’t come cheap), there is the suggestion other strategic forces are at play.
Of these, a looming Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players’ association, and another lengthy, pandemic-affected NRL season where professional players have faced further stringent personal requirements, do not count in the World Cup’s favour.
Aside from all that, there aren’t many situations where the NRL likes being dictated to by the international community, or relinquishing the power of being the ultimate decision-maker.
If it comes to the crunch and the NRL or Australia won’t put players on the plane for England in October, do we have ourselves a situation where the Rugby League World Cup can still go ahead?
Can you leave out the reigning male and female champions and still make a fist of things?
What about the developing nations who still rely on a percentage of NRL players who might be kept at home?
Sure, they could still go ahead and substitute in part-time players, but does anybody have the courage to do so? How would that affect ticket sales and the prestige of the tournament?
Australian coach Mal Meninga has previously intimated that he would like the Kangaroos to carry the same sense of prestige as the USA basketball team, by mirroring their elite levels of excellence.
It seems fitting that if Australia boycotted (or was excluded from) the 2021 Rugby League World Cup, it might cause a vacuum similar to the basketball contest at the 1980 Olympics.
And what might be the long-term ramifications? How much of it would be bad and how much of it would be good?
Interestingly, before the USA boycotted the 1980 Olympics, there were zero NBA MVPs to be born overseas.
Since 1980, there have been seven occasions the MVP has been won by those born outside the USA (nine if you count the two awards won by Tim Duncan of the US Virgin Islands).
The percentage of foreign-born NBA players has also skyrocketed since 1980, rising from less than two per cent to approximately 25 per cent in 2021.
Now, many things have contributed to those statistics, including the thawing of the Cold War, augmented broadcast rights, expanded scouting networks and the growing ease of international travel.
Some even say the USA Dream Team itself is responsible for the popularity of the international game – meaning, somewhat paradoxically, that both its presence and absence could be credited for global growth.
Yugoslavian players first started to trickle through to the NBA in 1989 via two Hall of Fame talents in Dražen Petrović and Vlade Divac.
At the time when Yugoslavia won the gold medal in 1980, Petrović was 16, while Divac was aged 12, both formative ages.
Current MVP Jokić wasn’t born until 1995, but has credited his two older brothers – born in 1982 and 1984 – for encouraging him into playing basketball.
When you look around rugby league, a gap of 25 years is a common generational gap; 25 years between father and son playing first grade; 25 years between mass migration to Australia and heritage teams being formed.
It makes you think what rugby league might look like in 2046 if Australia isn’t at this year’s World Cup – and possibly New Zealand for that matter.
Certainly, it boosts the chances of England winning at a time when the host nation could use a shot in the arm.
It might also open up spots to countries that benefit long-term.
Quite remarkably, given the precise basketball parallels drawn in this story, the USA and Serbia would be two of the teams best positioned to step in, having been eliminated late in qualifying.
Another nation eliminated late from 2021 Rugby League World Cup qualifying, Spain, has also been a big improver in Olympic basketball since 1980, winning four medals (zero before 1980).
Let’s not forget that International Rugby League survives (scrapes by) largely on the revenue generated by Rugby League World Cups.
Postponing for another year will mean the 80 per cent of participating nations who have a hand-to-mouth existence continue to bite and claw for two-thirds of nothing for an extra 12 months.
Another point that shouldn’t be overlooked is that players and staff from developing nations have regularly paid for the honour of representing their country.
If a stumbling block is that Australia’s contingent want to be recompensed for earning potential lost while in quarantine, it will go down like a lead balloon amongst those with fewer resources who have made greater sacrifices, sleeping on gym floors and at bus terminals on their way to a World Cup.
Poignantly, in many dissections of the consequence of the USA boycotting the 1980 Olympics, a common theme is that it was America’s young athletes who were actually most disadvantaged, denied an opportunity that did not necessarily come around again.
A noted example was 12-time NBA All Star Isiah Thomas, who was pre-selected in 1980, but due to the boycott and later circumstance, never made an Olympic appearance in his life.
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