Preamble

Jonathan Howcroft

Hello everybody and welcome to live coverage of the opening match of the 2026 men’s Rugby League World Cup. It’s the two favourites to kick us off with Australia meeting New Zealand at Allianz Stadium in Sydney from 8.05pm local time (10.05am BST / 10.05pm NZDT).

Skills have never been sharper, play has never been faster, and the strength in depth of Super League and the NRL makes for compelling sport on a weekly basis. The Vegas experiment has come up trumps. Expansion into Papua New Guinea is imminent. By almost every metric rugby league is flying.

One obvious exception is on the international front. This World Cup should have been staged in France last year but the hosts pulled out after the French government withdrew funding. The solution to push the competition back a year and shift it down under was accompanied by a reduction in competing nations from 16 to 10, and the total number of matches from 31 to 18.

Since the inaugural tournament in 1954 the RLWC has not followed the traditional quadrennial cycle. It has a history of being cobbled together on an ad hoc basis. There has never been a glut of international teams demanding of such an exercise to prove their status, illustrated by Australia winning three-quarters of all World Cups, including nine of the past 10.

But the fluid nature of national identity is beginning to test the status quo. The proliferation of first-grade footballers with Pacific Island heritage, and their readiness to represent the nations of their ancestry has allowed genuine contenders to emerge in the form of Tonga and 2022 runners-up Samoa, while Cook Islands, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea all boast high profile coaches and plenty of top-level experience among their ranks.

Domestic rugby league is thriving and State of Origin has raised the bar, now it’s time for the international scene to make a statement.

I’ll be back with final team lists and more shortly. Please send me your emails and keep me company throughout the evening. The address is jonathan.howcroft.freelance@theguardian.com.