KEY POINTS:
So the Kangaroos won the Tri-Nations title they so painfully lost to New Zealand in Leeds last year.
Cracking test, too. A classic. Extra time, golden point, nerves stretched and frayed to breaking point.
It would be enough to raise great passion in league heartland ... wouldn't it?
Not really, as it happens.
Last night's final seemed to be played in a void. Empty seats were plentiful among a crowd of 27,000. The two teams might have been "up for it" but the crowd stayed home.
League in late November is a bit like a daylight disco - it sounds all right in principle but the public will take some convincing.
It's not as if Aussie Stadium is a big ground. It holds 42,000, significantly smaller than Telstra Stadium up the road in Homebush and Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane.
League may have been born and bred along a line that can be traced from Hull on England's east coast to Liverpool St Helens on its west but it is Sydney where it has been most lovingly nurtured.
In working class inner-city suburbs such as Redfern, Balmain, Glebe and Newtown, identity and pride were forged through their league teams. But times have changed. Glebe and Newtown are no longer, Balmain have merged and morphed into the Wests Tigers and Redfern's finest, Souths, have survived only through the grace of the courts.
Last night's poor crowd was further evidence that Sydney's love affair with league is strained. Sydneysiders rejected this test and, if New Zealand Rugby League interim chairman Andrew Chalmers gets his way, test league should reject Sydney.
"Our preference for the Anzac test next year is Brisbane," Chalmers told reporters. "Look at the crowds we get up there. This is supposed to be a mecca for league but what sort of crowds have we had in Sydney? I don't know the reason for it but the people in Brisbane seem to get behind international football more."
Suncorp squeezed in more than 40,000 last week. Queenslanders care. Further south, apathy reigns.
