48 Hours: British league no patch on our part of world

The Bradford Bulls' win over the Wests Tigers in the World Club Challenge (WCC) is bad news for league.

Once again, an English club has won the WCC, and once again the Brits will rest on these dubious laurels and proffer a lame-duck game as evidence they are in reasonable shape.

Yes, the English have every right to crow about the win. And, to be fair, they haven't made any outrageous claims after their 30-10 win over the Tigers, but this pre-season affair still gets more status than it deserves.

Because NO - the WCC has no significance even though it always draws a decent crowd in England. In reality, it's a trumped-up match lacking genuine status, where the Australian team are always grossly under-prepared and battling jet-lag.

WCC contains one C more than the abbreviation for an object which would truly symbolise this match's place in world sport. The WCC means diddly-squat.

Bradford's triumph does mean that Australia will go into the 2006 season without any claims to a title, a rare moment indeed. But only a fool would rank the quality of British league as being on a par with this part of the world. They have fooled themselves for too long.

They used to engage in all sorts of mental somersaults to claim Andy Farrell as the game's best player. Now, they are cramming all the attention on Bradford prop Stuart Fielden.

History, and the NRL, is full of very good forwards like Fielden. He is a terrific player. But he's hardly a Wally Lewis, or an Artie Beetson. Or an Ellery Hanley (to give it a British flavour). Fielden Fever is another case of British league clutching at straws, piling the kudos on the one man who might just stick out in their ordinary crowd.

Bradford's win should text an important message to the Kiwis, however: this latest international defeat will just add to the sense of Australian frustration. The Kangaroos will be absolutely fizzing in 2006.

Bring it on though, as league - if not yet in full bloom - is at least flowering in an encouraging direction.

The Kiwis' triumph in the Tri-Nations last year was the best shot in the arm league has received in years.

The 2006 season could stand as a historical watershed in the game's revival if the Kiwis can repeat the dose. But what is also desperately needed is a British test team capable of winning the big prizes, rather than snatching snippets of glory.

For now, the best of league remains at this end of the world, whatever may have happened in Huddersfield over the weekend. You only have to watch a couple of Super League matches - particularly the haphazard defence - to realise that.

The key reason that English sides win the WCC more often than not is timing. With the start of the NRL five weeks away, there was little chance of Wests Tigers being in decent match shape now. In contrast, the WCC match was much better placed for Bradford, with the Super League starting this week. If Wests coach Tim Sheens had radically altered the usual pre-season drill for the sake of this game, his team would have paid dearly later in the NRL.

Super League's cross-hemisphere competition of the late 1990s reflected the true state of the Northern and Southern Hemisphere games - the northern sides were smashed like a balsa wood plane flying into a freight train.

British league has been cutting corners for years, relying on imports to prop the game up. The true state of British league can be found in the test results. They need to get real, and unfortunately Bradford's victory won't help them do that.

As for Wests, the heavy defeat will intensify fears among their supporters that the loss of brilliant Kiwi Benji Marshall in the early NRL weeks - as he recovers from shoulder surgery - will put them behind the eight-ball. Questions will be asked about their pack, and the over-reliance on the warhorse prop John Skandalis.

The old lesson in the NRL is this, however: it's not how you start the season but how you respond with the necessary adjustments which count at the business end.

Even a sevens rugby sceptic (hand up here) could rejoice in the thrilling final at the Wellington tournament between Fiji and South Africa.

Top entertainment in front of a crowd which was all dressed up with beer to flow.

For those who missed it, the South Africans - who are not allowed to include Super 14 players - never looked in the same class as the Fijians. Yet somehow they hung in there.

South Africa were given a late chance to win when a Fijian hacked the ball down field instead of over the sideline after the final hooter.

South Africa responded with a great try, but missed the conversion, and were beaten in extra time.

It was a victory opportunity they should never have been given, but reinforced the old adage that when it comes to Fijian rugby, you have to take the good with the mad.

There are stats for everything in sport these days. The Australian Open website even revealed exactly how many pies had been eaten at the previous event.

Here's another stat: someone has taken the time to discover that more than 5 per cent of people who tune into the Super Bowl - which takes place in Detroit today - do so primarily for the halftime advertisements.

HIGH

Jane Arnott qualifying for Melbourne by running over Aussie stars in the 400m at the Australian nationals. The sort of surprise-package story that continues to give the Commonwealth Games its heart and soul.

LOW

Middle-distance runner Kimberley Smith's Games demise because of an Achilles tendon tear. More injury concerns for discus star Beatrice Faumuina.