Rooms Messi but OK to Roos

IT was good enough for soccer great Lionel Messi and it’s good enough for Mal Meninga and his Kangaroos.

Australia’s rugby league team will bypass its traditional bases in Leeds and Manchester to stay at the English Football Association’s multimilliondollar training centre in the Midlands during next month’s Four Nations.

St George’s Park is the training home of England’s national soccer team and hosted Messi’s Barcelona during the Spanish La Liga champions’ recent pre-season camp.

Meninga and selectors Bob Fulton and Darren Lockyer will today announce a 24-man Australian team for the Four Nations in Britain.

The centre has a Hilton hotel, 12 training pitches, a fullsized indoor pitch, hydrotherapy suites, biomechanics and training gyms and medical and sport science facilities.

“It’s exciting if we could secure it,’’ Meninga said.

The St George’s Park centre is near Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire, a city of 72,000 well removed from league’s heartland counties Yorkshire and Lancashire, where Australian teams have been based on tours over many decades.

The approval of the booking by the NRL and the ARL Commission is in line with the high standards of off-field behaviour Meninga wants to set for players on his watch.

Cronulla forward Andrew Fifita, who has had controversial associations off the field which have been examined by the NRL’s integrity unit, will not be selected.