Tonga recorded their first-ever win over England in their opening pool clash at the 2026 Rugby League World Cup in Perth on Saturday night, with a 30-12 victory.<\/p>\n
It was a Haumole Olakau’atu double that inspired the Tongan XIII to the win.<\/p>\n
The win is the Pacific nation’s first over England in their history and helps avenge a two-point loss in the 2017 World Cup semifinal.<\/p>\n
Kristian Woolf’s men repelled multiple waves of England attack before scoring twice in three minutes to turn a 10-6 lead into a 22-6 advantage midway through the second half.<\/p>\n
England fought back through Dom Young before Haumole Olakau’atu’s second try with 10 minutes to play put the game to bed and secured a hard-fought 30-12 victory.<\/p>\n
The result puts Tonga in pole position to progress to the semi-final.<\/p>\n
With Samoa also winning their pool match against France, England must defeat France and Papua New Guinea and hope Tonga beats Samoa when the two Pacific nations face off at a sold-out CommBank Stadium in the final game of the group stage on 1 November.<\/p>\n
A total of 18,302 vocal fans turned up at HBF Park, painting the stadium red.<\/p>\n
Jason Taumalolo paid tribute to the players and the fans.<\/p>\n
“We got a group of talented players and one thing that has brought this group of players together is the sacrifice they made,” Taumalolo said.<\/p>\n
“Some of the boys could have played for the bigger countries. Forever grateful to the man above.<\/p>\n
“Grateful for all the Tongan fans who turned up to support the boys.<\/p>\n
“Obviously England was a tough game, talented players too. We were in for the fight the whole 80 minutes.”<\/p>\n
Head coach Kristian Woolf said they put themselves under pressure a couple of times, but “the longer the game went the better we got”.<\/p>\n
“The efforts were really important.”<\/p>\n
Woolf said they had done extraordinary things before, by beating Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n
He said it is a big thing beating Tier One nations.<\/p>\n
Co-captain Addin Fonua-Blake said they regrouped at halftime and came back strong in the second half.<\/p>\n
“It was a physical game. They capitalised on some of our ill-discipline.”<\/p>\n
Fonua-Blake said they were able to swing the momentum back in their favour, after the initial English attack in the earlier part of the second half.<\/p>\n
Tonga struck first in the match through Stefano Utoikamanu, and managed to keep a clean sheet in the first half as two Isaiya Katoa penalty goals made it 10-0 at the break.<\/p>\n
England were finally rewarded for their effort in the 46th minute when Hugo Savala went through a hole.<\/p>\n
A second English try appeared imminent before a high shot on Tongan winger Dallin Watene-Zelezniak swung the momentum.<\/p>\n
Tonga capitalised on the opening, Olakau’atu and Tolu Koula crossing for tries in successive sets to put their nation in control.<\/p>\n
England cut the deficit to 12 through Dominic Young before Olakau’atu pounced on an Isaiya Katoa grubber in the dying minutes.<\/p>\n
Tongan fans erupted with joyous celebration as the final whistle went.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tonga recorded their first-ever win over England in their opening pool clash at the 2026 Rugby League World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-633790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}