The English and Kiwis will be paid well for the match. It is being staged on an NRL standalone weekend, so there is no conflict with NRL fixtures. All good so far.

But the NRL clubs are up in arms about the Test. They're worried that their players will get injured, that the game will be played at altitude, about the travel time to Colarado and back, they're worried about anything and everything, with every excuse under the sun. They want Denver scrapped.

 


Basically an insular attitude reigns supreme in the NRL and they don't want anything to interfere with their own interests and their own highly successful competition. On one hand, it's somewhat understandable.

But on the other side it's myopic, pure self-interest and just plain wrong. What is the point of having an international game, of pushing rugby league around the world, with one arm and three fingers tied around your back?

What the NRL clubs fail to realise is that they can benefit too from the international game succeeding and growing. They can attract new fans, viewers and sponsors from around the globe.

If rugby league takes off in the United States then the NRL will have a big boost. Like how football has grown in North America, so has interest in the English Premier League soared. Premier League clubs now make oodles of money from the American market.

The NRL is the premier competition in the rugby league world, and that's a fact that isn't changing anytime soon. Improving and growing the international arm of the 13-man code can be a massive advantage for the NRL.

You only have to point to football and rugby union, even basketball, or the AFL's many attempts, often ham-fisted, to grow around the planet and in different countries. The club and international game go hand in hand and can work in harmony. They are mutually beneficial, they are inter-connected.

There is no worth to staging a World Cup every four years if international footy is left to wither on the vine between tournaments. It's completely counter-productive.

The NRL needs to wake up and realise rugby league exists outside of NSW, Queensland, Melbourne and Auckland. It needs to learn that all it is doing is harming the wider sport and keeping the code small and contained.

And in the long run, in this age of globalisation and expansion, that can only be a bad thing.