The Rugby League World Cup group stage concluded with some superb matches \u2013 and some bumper attendances to boot,\u00a0too.<\/p>\n
The four semi-finalists for the men\u2019s tournament have officially been locked in after the final five group stage games, all of which attracted pretty healthy crowds across the board.<\/p>\n
Here is how they all fared \u2013 including how one match set an all-time attendance record in the process..<\/p>\n
England 34-12 Papua New Guinea: 15,063<\/p>\n
The final round of group games began with a double-header for England\u2019s men and women in Wollongong. WIN Stadium holds around 23,000 supporters so it wasn\u2019t exactly full, but it was a decent enough effort as the men\u2019s side defeated Papua New Guinea on Friday.<\/p>\n
New Zealand 78-0 Fiji: 23,659<\/p>\n
The Saturday action began over on the Gold Coast \u2013 and it was pretty close to a full house at Cbus Super Stadium as New Zealand underlined their credentials as serious World Cup contenders with a destructive win over Fiji. The crowds for the Kiwis games have been superb so far \u2013 that theme will continue for at least another week in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Australia 66-6 Cook Islands: 19,172<\/p>\n
The tournament headed to Townsville later on Saturday evening as the defending champions thrashed the Cook Islands to make it three wins from three. There were just under 20,000 fans there to watch it; the smallest crowd for a Kangaroos game by some distance so far, given how their previous clashes had seen over 40,000 people in attendance.<\/p>\n
Lebanon 24-20 France and Tonga 20-18 Samoa: 29,411<\/p>\n
The group stage finished with a magnificent double-header \u2013 with both games going right down to the wire and the attendance setting an all-time record for CommBank Stadium in Sydney.<\/p>\n
The home of Parramatta Eels attracted a whopping 29,411 fans for both games \u2013 the biggest EVER crowd in the stadium\u2019s history and one of the biggest in Rugby League World Cup history for a group stage match.<\/p>\n
Outside of last year\u2019s meeting in the Pacific Championships, it was also the biggest crowd for a Tonga-Samoa match in the history of the two nations. They could meet again in the final in a fortnight too \u2013 if they do, there will be even more records broken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rugby League World Cup group stage concluded with some superb matches \u2013 and some bumper attendances to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-821002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}