Are tickets affordable?

Gianni Infantino said the World Cup was like 104 Super Bowls. The men’s event at the Rugby League World Cup will be more like 18 Super League games. Some matches will attract four-figure crowds while others will be played in front of full houses of 50,000. There will be tens of thousands fans visiting rather than millions, but they will have fewer visa issues.

There are effectively three Rugby League World Cups taking place at the same time: the men’s, women’s and wheelchair events. Like the football tournament this summer, they are being played in three countries: Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Unlike the football, however, you won’t have to remortgage your house to attend.

Tickets are available for every match – including the Australia v New Zealand opener in Sydney on 15 October and the final in Brisbane on 15 November – starting at just £20. My ticket for the triple-header – Tonga v Samoa and Lebanon v France in the men’s event, plus Australia v Wales in the women’s tournament – in Parramatta cost about £10. That would not have bought a pint at some World Cup matches this summer.

How many teams are taking part?

The football World Cup keeps expanding, as more games means more money, while the rugby league event is shrinking to keep costs down. The men’s tournament has been cut from 16 teams to 10 this year, meaning there will be just 18 games compared with 31 at the previous World Cup. The women’s and wheelchair events have both stayed at eight teams.

Most players are NRL-based, which keeps costs down. Four years ago, the organisers had to pay for hundreds of players to fly from the Pacific to England. Fifa made $15bn (£11.2bn) from this summer’s World Cup, but the IRL is simply trying to make a profit despite spending more on team costs and participation fees than ever before.

How far will players travel?

The football World Cup was a logistical minefield for the 48 teams involved. England travelled more than 14,000 miles before their semi-final defeat by Argentina. The Rugby League World Cup will not be as taxing on the air miles.

There are 52 matches across the men’s, women’s and wheelchair tournaments but, with so many double-, triple- and even quadruple-headers, there are only 26 events in 12 venues: 11 NRL stadiums plus Wollongong Entertainment Centre, where the wheelchair tournament takes place.

Most men’s squads will set up camp for the group stage and make one long trip. England play their first two games, against Tonga and France, in Perth before heading east to Wollongong for their final group game. With both semi-finals in New South Wales and the final in Brisbane, Brian McDermott’s men will hope to stay on the east coast for a further fortnight. Australia and Fiji will not leave it all tournament.

Although, spare a thought for Cook Islands: they will clock up more than 3,500 miles – travelling from Newcastle to Christchurch to Townsville to complete their group of death. They have been given the longest trip and the shortest straw.

What would success be for England?

Unlike the football team, England always reach the last four of the Rugby League World Cup. Their last three semi-finals have been desperately tight. They lost in heartbreaking fashion to New Zealand in 2013, scraped past Tonga in 2017 thanks to a debatable last-minute refereeing decision, and were stunned by Samoa in 2022, losing out on a place in the final by a point.

If England beat Tonga in their opening match they will probably reach the semi-finals, where they will face Australia or New Zealand. It will be 20 years that week since the Kangaroos lost to any British team, so McDermott will be hoping he’s up against the Kiwis.

Like the football team, England prefer to be underdogs. When everything was in their favour four years ago – they were playing at home against a Samoa side they had thumped 60-6 in the tournament opener – they froze. When the world was against them in 2017, they gave Australia a fright in the final. A repeat this year would be admirable.

Will countries use their diasporas?

Nearly a quarter of the players at the football World Cup were not born in the country they represented. Only one Curaçao player was born there and none of the Cape Verde squad lives on the islands. The football teams did what Tonga, Samoa and many other International rugby league teams have done for some time: considered every eligible professional.

Nine of the 48 squads were mostly made up of heritage or diaspora players, a proportion that will be similar at the rugby league event. Lebanon will not bring any domestic players given the conflict affecting the game there, and the Pacific Island nations will have a mix of locally-born talent and players from Australia or New Zealand. Co-hosts Papua New Guinea have a diverse squad and France have scouted the NRL for players, capping Louis Grossemy, who was born in Sydney to a French father.

For Michael Olise – who set up seven of France’s goals at the World Cup but was not one of the 99 players at the tournament born in France – see Wakefield prop Caleb Hamlin-Uele, who was born in Auckland but is now set for an England debut. McDermott has picked six players who were born in Australia in his 38-man training group. Thomas Tuchel, the England men’s football team manager, can relate: Declan Rice is a former Republic of Ireland international, Elliot Anderson played for Scotland Under-21s, and Marc Guéhi was born in Côte d’Ivoire.

What role will the minnows play?

Rugby league fans may have watched wistfully as Cape Verde – a multicultural team of journeymen, including a Shamrock Rovers centre-back who was found on LinkedIn – gave eventual finalists Spain and Argentina the fright of their lives. Those charming stories epitomised previous Rugby League World Cups, but will be largely absent this time, other than Lebanon’s war-torn backdrop and the Cook Islands’ contests against the Kangaroos, Kiwis and Fiji.

Cape Verde rose to the challenge, but mismatches in rugby often pan out differently. Low-profile professional players can be fit, organised, passionate and focused, but dogged semi-pros and plucky amateurs cannot stop NRL stars from steamrolling them.

Take Greece, the underdogs in the group of death four years ago. France, England and Samoa racked up 200 points cumulatively against a squad featuring veteran domestic players, a couple of young NRL regulars, a shipping lawyer from London and a winger who was only eligible because he turned 18 just before scoring a fabulous try in his World Cup debut. The IRL’s decision to limit the tournament to 10 teams has ended the prospect of these romantic adventures. Probably sensible, definitely sad.

Where can fans watch?

The football tournament was viewed from every corner of the globe, but the world will not stop for the rugby league event. The rights-holders IMG are about to announce deals with 20 countries in south-east Asia and North America, and are working on packages for the UK, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Every competing country should be shown back home, which is not always the case. Italy’s three World Cup campaigns were not shown in their homeland.

The kick-off times for England’s group games – Saturday breakfast slots – are clearly aimed at a home audience. There are a few very early starts but the good news is the final kicks off at a civilised 8.35am. If England make it, just don’t expect the country to grind to a halt to watch.

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