Rugby League World Cup: Confirmed line-ups for Week 2<\/a><\/p>\nTonga is tipped to dismantle Lebanon ($41) in Sydney, as is England against France ($51) in Perth, and both almost certainly will.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Kiwis and Kangaroos are similarly expected to blitz the Cook Islands ($51) and Fiji ($41) respectively and it\u2019s hard to see any other outcome this weekend or in Week 3 when their opponents are reversed.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just a problem for value-seeking punters, of course.<\/p>\n
Mismatches on this scale are hardly a selling point for fans and broadcasters and they\u2019re unlikely to do much for the weekend\u2019s television ratings.<\/p>\n
Frustratingly, the game has done itself no favours with the complex three-pool crossover format adopted for the 2026 tournament that sees different nations looking to qualify for the semi-finals under very different conditions – all seemingly to avoid having two five-team pools that would add an extra match to each team\u2019s schedule.<\/p>\n
The lack of foresight that has led to the Week 2 wasteland is also a major missed opportunity. Why not play the Tonga-Samoa blockbuster this weekend to fill the obvious gap, for example?<\/p>\n
Organisers will rightly point to the tournament\u2019s growth and development of the emerging nations is a worthy goal.<\/p>\n
But a schedule that serves up this many one-sided contests in a single round raises serious questions around the format if nothing else.<\/p>\n
For fans hoping for a genuine contest this weekend the best hope may be Samoa and PNG, and perhaps Australia and Fiji.<\/p>\n
But even there, the markets suggest it\u2019s a long shot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rugby League World Cup returns this weekend with five more men\u2019s matches, and sadly all five threaten…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":935458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-935457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/935458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}