Wigan might have won their spirited clash 24-10 in Wollongong and taken the two points, but Super League was the winner.
History was made with the first Super League game staged outside of the UK and Europe. The Warriors and Black & Whites did battle in the heat and humidity of Illawarra’s WIN Stadium a month before the NRL season kicks off.
The game was fast, furious and brutal with Hull FC players dropping like flies. Liam Marshall showed he should have been a sprinter, Sam Tomkins his twinkling feet and Fetuli Talanoa his go-go-gadget arms. Lee Radford’s team demonstrated great courage to keep in the fight as they lost player after player to injury.
The encounter was far from perfect, with plenty of errors and knock ons, but there was plenty of action, entertainment and big hits for the Wollongong crowd, and that is exactly what they were after. There was full-blooded commitment and enthusiasm, along with a fair bit of niggle. Just over 12,000 trundled into one of the two homes of St George Illawarra to see this first southern hemisphere Super League event.
By any measure, the decision to take a competition game down under has been success. Reports state that the two clubs will walk away with £500,000 each from the tour, a figure that can’t be sneezed at. The whole journey has been bankrolled by the NSW Government and NSW Tourism. It is believed nearly 5000 English fans made the trip down under for this game, and the matches with Souths and the Dragons a week later in Sydney.
The choice of WIN Stadium as the venue was inspired. It is one of the nicest, most picturesque grounds in the NRL. Wollongong is a heartland rugby league area where the sport is top dog. It is also an area that is starved of professional rugby league these days. St George Illawarra now only play there four times a year, leaving the market wanting more. Bizarrely the 2017 World Cup bypassed the Illawarra region, meaning the city was ripe for a taste of Super League at this time of year.
For the past week Hull FC and Wigan have broken their backs promoting the clash in Wollongong. The have held event after event, held coaching clinics, meet and greets, civil ceremonies and the like to spread awareness. It was a flurry of marketing activity normally unheard of in the sport. Their media engagement and access has been first-class, and they have been rewarded for their initiative. Honouring two of the club’s Aussie greats – Brett Kenny and Peter Sterling – by naming the shield they were playing for made perfect sense.
This game in Wollongong has made more money and more headlines than it would have if it was at the KCOM or the DW Stadium. Professional sport is about offering experiences, and the tour to Wollongong has given travelling fans one.
Super League is not in a state of mastery or dominance that it can sit on its laurels and maintain the status quo. It needs to be bold and innovative, and make smart commercial decisions, and this Australian trip has been one of them.
Where it goes next is hard to know. It could be a one-off, though Wigan have shown their desire to take games to different cities. They play a pre-season game in London every year and took a Super League match to Millwall a few years ago.
The Australian city of Perth is another market is open to professional rugby league. It has no NRL team, is home to a huge amount of English expats and has appropriate stadia. A World Cup double-header that was staged there three months ago attracted 15,000 spectators. If Western Australia want to finance it, and the numbers add up, Super League could be on its way to the Swan River next. This could only be the beginning.
