Smith’s take on World Cup collapse and international RL
HULL FC head coach Tony Smith has reacted to the 2025 Rugby League World Cup collapse in France.
The European nation was scheduled to host the tournament, but their withdrawal was confirmed last week. That has seen other suitors declare their interest in hosting the tournament. New Zealand have put their hand up, with Qatar, who recently held the FIFA World Cup, also in the mix.
Smith, meanwhile, refuses to put the blame on the international board or the sport’s federation in France.
It has been reported that the new French Government were demanding “financial guarantees to cover the risk of losses”, despite investing a ridiculous amount of money into both the 2023 Rugby Union World Cup and 2024 Summer Olympics.
“It’s just disappointing; there’s not much we can say about it,” Smith told the Mail.
“I see some people putting the boot into rugby league about that and the international game, but I’m not sure that’s the case.
“Hey, international rugby league sometimes needs a kick up the backside, but from what I understand, I don’t think that’s the place to lay the blame.
“I think they did everything they could, and this is a disappointment due to even bigger circumstances: a government change. That’s what I get and that’s hard to account for. It’s hard to put the blame on the international board for that.
“The only thing I’d say is that it can happen no matter how well you plan for the future. If it’s a change in government with different people in charge, then you can’t account for that, but if we have a plan in place more often for our international game and buy-in from everybody, it would be to our advantage. It’s unfortunate, but hopefully they’ll come up with the best alternative that they can.”
International rugby league has often been accused of rushing projects together and lacking forward planning. It was only within the last month that the
England v Tonga series was confirmed for this autumn, with no word yet on what the England calendar looks like for next year.
In fact, that three-match blockbuster, along with the European Cup, are the only confirmed series for the end of the season, with no fixtures yet scheduled for Australia, New Zealand, or Samoa.
Smith shares that frustration, but it’s not just the sparse fixture calendar that is an issue for the international game. The veteran coach is also calling for the sport, mainly England, to do more to ensure the development of young players and get better athletes through the system.
“If there was a better plan and more buy-in, it would give us more chance, but it is what it is,” Smith added. “We haven’t got a lot of nations that play at high levels. That’s part of our problem.
“To have a really strong international sport, you need a certain amount of competitive clubs. There’s such a big gap between the top nations and the rest. Some of that has changed with Tonga and Samoa allowing those players to go back and forth with the Australian and Kiwi teams, or those players making a choice to play for their heritage nation. If that wasn’t as fluent, we’d still have bigger gaps. We haven’t quite grasped how to bridge that gap between the bigger and smaller nations yet.
“We (England) haven’t worked out how to become one of the biggest nations ourselves. We haven’t cracked that formula, and that’s not just about playing games regularly; that’s about the development of young players and having the correct pathways and the right size pool to draw from.
“We haven’t cracked that either or spent enough time to work out how to recruit more athletes. We’re not the first-choice sport for most athletes.
“We haven’t figured out how to turn heads and make them join ours. Until we do that, we won’t crack the international scene as often as we would like.”