A cursory look at the history of the RLWC will show you one thing: Australia have absolutely dominated the event, winning 12 of 16 editions, with only New Zealand and Great Britain/England winning the other four.
At first, that might make the tournament feel a little lopsided, monopolised, or perhaps even monocultural. But actually, that isn’t quite the case when you look a little deeper at the game, and it’s changing face, aided by some evolving international eligibility rules.
Let’s get one thing straight: Rugby league is a sport dominated by Australia, as the NRL is by far the biggest and best product, attracting top players from across the Pacific and even the UK at times. England's Super League, which also has a French side, is the only competition that comes remotely close to competing with it, but it’s barely comparable.
To illustrate that point financially, the NRL recently signed the largest broadcast deal in Australian sporting history, worth $5.3 billion (AUD) for seven years. In contrast, the Super League's broadcast deal with Sky is reported to be worth £21.5 million per season - that’s almost 20 times less per annum.
Australia's staggering dominance
Displaying the dominance of the NRL in practical player terms: Out of the 230 players selected across the 10 nations at the ongoing World Cup, 151 of them (~66%) play in the NRL. Further, it has been reported that roughly two-thirds of all the players in the competition are Australian-born. That’s remarkable when you think about it…
In the entire World Cup, two out of three players were born in Australia, and that’s not to mention the many who moved there at a young age, which blows the total Aussies out to over three-quarters of the entire player pool.
To add even more complexity to that: Rugby league is only very popular in two of Australia’s six states - New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland - which have a combined population of about 14.5 million. That is less than the Netherlands, Cambodia, or Ecuador.
Rugby league doesn’t have the international reach of union, which is played much more widely. Many rugby strongholds, such as South Africa and Ireland, barely have rugby league scenes at all.
Even New Zealand is very much a union country; despite the fact that it produces a bunch of NRL players and hosts a franchise, the Warriors. Apart from the incoming Papua New Guinea-based team, the Auckland outfit are the only elite rugby league entity in the Southern Hemisphere outside of Australia.
In the entire Hemisphere, there is one fully professional competition. In that, there are 19 teams if we include the two incoming ones. All but two of those are based in Australia; of those 17, nine are located in Sydney alone, with 10 in NSW (11 if you include Canberra).
On the face of it, it’s very clear where the beating heart of the game is: Sydney, particularly its western suburbs, along with parts of regional NSW and, of course, Queensland.
It's easy then to understand why the centrepiece of the Australian season is the inaugural State of Origin series - which pits the best of NSW-raised players against the best of Queensland's.
Up until last year, players were not allowed to swap between the three so-called 'Tier 1' nations - Australia, New Zealand & England - at international level. What's more, if Australian players opted to represent a different Tier 1 nation at international level, they were not eligible for selection in State of Origin.
The inverse was also true: Once you went to play Origin, you were effectively electing to play for Australia, and that meant no switching to New Zealand or England, even if you met the other eligibility requirements.
Game-changing eligibility evolution
This is where the NRL got creative and changed the rules ahead of the 2026 World Cup. As of this year, you can now play for a Tier 1 country other than Australia and still appear in State of Origin. To put this another way: You can now play for NSW or Queensland and then represent New Zealand or England at the World Cup.
This is exactly what NRL star Kalyn Ponga, New Zealand’s fullback, has done. Ponga represents Queensland, and because he had also represented Australia at the 9s World Cup in 2019, he was ineligible to switch to New Zealand, the home of his forefathers and where he spent a portion of his childhood. Despite fulfilling the basic eligibility requirements to play for the Kiwis, he was locked into Australian representation under the old rules.
Another key example of these new rules in practice is veteran centre Dane Gagai, who successfully appealed to switch from Australia to New Zealand, despite having represented the Kangaroos seven times in full 13-a-side Test matches in the past.
The IRL, the body that runs the game at the international level, already had very relaxed rules around international eligibility to allow players from the Tier 1 nations to play for the 'smaller' Tier 2 or 3 nations. The big beneficiaries of this system have been the Pacific nations: Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and the Cook Islands, who all have sides at the ongoing World Cup.
There are, of course, limitations to the switching of allegiances: You have to be eligible for the nation you transfer to through residence, birth, parents or grandparents, and you cannot represent more than one nation per calendar year. If you are moving between Tier 1 and 2/3 nations, you can do so multiple times, but if you are moving between Tiers 2 and 3, you can do so only once every four years.
Samoa and Tonga, in particular, have built formidable sides over the last few years by tapping into the resource of NRL stars who have ancestry on the islands, some of whom have even played for Australia or New Zealand in the past.
Sometimes, these players have even represented more than one lower-tier nation, as is the case of Sydney Roosters forward Siua Wong, who previously played for Fiji but now plays for Tonga, and was born in New Zealand but went to high school in Australia.
This might sound like a particularly exotic case study, but these trans-Tasman, even pan-Pacific stories are remarkably common in rugby league...
Pan-Pacific cross-pollination
To name a few, Samoa have called on NRL stars Jarome Luai, Stephen Crichton, Brian To'o, and Junior Paulo, who were all raised in Sydney and have represented NSW in State of Origin, as well as Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow, who not only played for Queensland, but even Australia as recently as 2024, as well as the Indigenous All-Stars, given he has Torres Strait Islander ancestry.
Like Wong, Tonga's Katoa brothers, Isaiya and Sione, were both born in New Zealand, but moved to Sydney at different ages. Addin Fonua-Blake was raised in Sydney, and previously represented New Zealand. Jojo Fifita is another who was born in New Zealand but raised in Australia - a Queenslander; he has also played Origin.
Dallin Watene-Zelezniak is yet another star who was born in New Zealand, moved to Australia at a young age, now represents Tonga but previously played for the Kiwis. Similarly, Jason Taumalolo was raised in New Zealand until he was scouted and moved to North Queensland as a teenager.
The Cook Islands now boast the services of Valentine Holmes, who played over 20 times for Australia in the past, as well as for Queensland. Fijian captain Apisai Koroisau also played State of Origin, but for NSW, being another from Sydney. Koroisau’s cousin, Sunia Turuva, plays for Fiji as well but is also from Sydney’s west. Almost all of the Lebanese team are Australians with Lebanese, and often mixed, roots and most of them emerged out of Sydney’s western suburbs.
If you even wanted an argument for how the NRL overshadows the Super League, England have even poached a few Aussies to bulk out their side, with Roosters pair Victor Radley and Hugo Savala both born-and-bred Sydney-siders, while regional NSW product Ben Talty and Queensland's AJ Brimson have also been enticed over, with the latter having played for Australia in 9s.
There’s more than one way to look at this demographic ecosystem. On one hand, it is incredibly monocultural, with so many league stars coming from just a few main hubs on the east coast of Australia, with a healthy crop of Kiwis thrown in.
However, the truer way to look at it might be to say that the real heartlands of rugby league are just very diverse - multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual. That diversity has allowed the game to amplify itself out of being just Australia and New Zealand, just the NRL, or just NSW vs Queensland.
What’s more, with the help of some creative rules, this inherent cultural complexity has allowed the game to spread its incredible wealth of talent around several national teams in the hope of making the RLWC a better product for fans.
Australia might go on to win yet another World Cup title on November 15th - they edged their main rivals New Zealand in an epic tournament opener last week, only adding gloss to their favourites tag. But even if they do, that won't change the fact that the RLWC is a lot more interesting than it looks at first glance.
And who knows, maybe this is the year we see a new winner, with Samoa and Tonga off to impressive starts.
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Pat Dempsey is a senior editor on Flashscore's global news desk. Based in Europe but from Australia, his expertise lies in football and cricket. You can read his feature articles here and find him on LinkedIn.
