Mal Meninga believes international rugby league is on ‘right path’ despite global development concerns

When Australia’s rugby league team faces Tonga in Brisbane on Friday, it will have been more than six years since coach Mal Meninga’s ancestral land – Vanuatu – played a recognised men’s international.

The plight of Vanuatu, ranked 57th globally, looms over international rugby league like a warning beacon, indicative of concerns for developing nations, particularly in the south.

Despite this, Meninga believes league’s current strategy of consolidating activity in its strongest nations is astute.

“You want every game to be quality,” Meninga said from Kangaroos camp this week.

“Say Australia was to play Vanuatu, for example, if we beat them 100-nil it might not generate the promotional benefit you’d like.”

Although recent headlines have been promising for league’s international footprint – a foray into the United States and hundreds of millions pledged towards PNG’s NRL bid – they obscure a great deal.

Like the 2,197 days since Vanuatu Rugby League faced Turkey at the Emerging Nations World Championship, an event that has been discussed, but not held since.

Before this week, the only genuine men’s international in 2024 featuring a southern hemisphere nation was Chile v North Macedonia.

The Kangaroos are guaranteed to play just twice this year in the Pacific Championships, while the Wallabies and Socceroos play more than a dozen internationals each in 2024.

For now, Meninga is comfortable with that too, but is encouraged by the potential for change.

“Hopefully we get 20 teams in the NRL, play each other just once over 19 rounds, then free up eight weeks in the calendar down the track.”

Of course, rugby league is much stronger domestically than internationally, but even in comparison to past league seasons, 2024 has been particularly quiet below the equator.

Asia Pacific Rugby League, the federation that encompasses most top-ranked nations, did not update its Facebook account between January and October, despite having 160,000 followers

With the number of men’s teams at the 2026 World Cup cut from 16 to 10, nations outside of Europe have largely abandoned fixtures.

The discontinuation of mid-season international games in June, and the stricter enforcement of abeyance periods, which prohibit play in warmer months, has contributed to this equation.

So close, yet so far

Vanuatu sits less than 2,000km from Brisbane, and first featured in representative rugby league in 2012, when Meninga’s nephew Joe wore the jersey of the Melanesian nation.

Aside from Meninga, other famous rugby league players with roots in Vanuatu include Gorden Tallis, Ken Nagas, Sam Backo, Jharal Yow Yeh, Rhys Wesser, Justin O’Neill, Travis Waddell and Isaiah Tass.

But Vanuatu has never contested a single World Cup qualifying match and does not feel overly incentivised, with its pathway blocked by rugby league’s somewhat befuddling structure.

While most nations around the world need to abide by certain domestic quotas (a minimum number of players residing in-country) for World Cup qualifiers, the Pacific Islands do not.

This plays heavily into the hands of Tonga, Samoa, and Fiji in particular, due to the number of NRL players with heritage in those nations.

Not that these nations regularly play qualifiers, with the International Rugby League (IRL) deciding the eight quarter-finalists from each World Cup automatically qualify for the next.

This creates a vacuum of opportunity for remaining countries in Asia Pacific.

Theoretically, around 50 nations worldwide are left to compete for two World Cup places, however, due to a multitude of reasons, the vast majority don’t get the chance.

“Let’s be realistic, we are a long way from ever reaching the World Cup, but just to be able to play a qualifier would be huge,” Vanuatu Rugby League founding committee member Ben Howard said.

“It makes it a lot easier to get government support, attract sponsors and media when those events are on your calendar.”

Of those nations automatically qualified for the 2026 World Cup, only England, Australia and PNG have populations greater than 10 million, severely hampering commercial appeal.

At the end of every World Cup cycle for at least the last four World Cups, developing nations have been assured increased funding would arrive from looming commercial opportunities.

The IRL has promoted a new ‘World Series’ as its salve for minnow nations, but the details and certainty around the concept have been treated with some scepticism.

Baulking at reform

There have been several chances put to IRL committees to alter pathways and open the sport to more regular participation from developing nations.

That includes halving the number of automatic World Cup qualifiers and promoting more accessible forms of the sport, like beach leagues or the nine-a-side game.

Instead, rugby league has gone the opposite direction, with IRL committees adopting ‘six again’ and other laws from professional competitions that make it harder for amateurs to compete.

Vitally, Ben Howard said, developing nations had no representative on the IRL board.

“I’ve presented at IRL congress about potential solutions, so the needs of all members are accounted,” Howard said.

“You need an avenue to promote and support nations where rugby league is still emerging.

“A voice in the governance structure of the IRL would definitely be beneficial to the game.”

A momentous stare-down in 2021 had the potential to drastically alter the power dynamic, when Australia and New Zealand indicated they would boycott the planned World Cup of that year due to COVID concerns.

A few days of ringing around ensued, where powerbrokers tested the water to see if they had enough support to call the Kangaroos’ and Kiwis’ bluff.

If the World Cup proceeded without the powerhouse duo, there was every chance the matches would have been closer, different players would have grabbed the spotlight, not to mention an increased likelihood host England would have triumphed.

There was also the suspicion several NRL players would break rank, illustrating the lure of their home nation jersey was more powerful than contracts, triggering a wave of athlete sentiment.

But that was never tested as the decision was made to delay the tournament by a year.

International league fans similarly lament that when most Pacific nations shrugged competition in 2021, little-known Dutchman Joran Schoenmaker was not awarded the Golden Boot.

In deciding not to award the prize for the best international player that year, it was seen as another reinforcement that anything unattached to the NRL was not worth highlighting.

Absence doesn’t always make heart fonder

Vanuatu is not Robinson Crusoe when it comes to its plight.

Athletes for the Philippines and South Africa, impressive outfits with a combined population of 180 million, have expressed dismay with their pathways and chances to take on the ‘big guns’.

Brazil (population 215 million) spent significant sums contesting the South American Championship of 2022 so their men’s team could progress through qualifying, while their women’s team was initially guaranteed a spot at the next World Cup.

Both doorways were shut after France withdrew from hosting the coming World Cup, and Brazil’s encouraging domestic competition, which took a decade to build, collapsed.

IRL Secretary General Danny Kazandjian this week said in an Everything Rugby League podcast there was a “reset” in strategy after the French World Cup crisis.

Kazandjian admitted previous dreams of becoming an Olympic sport were no longer realistic, meaning the need to increase the number of members had diminished.

“We are a sport with 58 members, five of which have financial reserves,” he said.

“It’s more about stability and the ability to weather the storm, rather than continued growth.”

In 2018, the IRL reported it had 71 members, and despite the reduction, Kazandjian said the sport was now at “the strongest period of competitiveness in rugby league history”.

Over the past decade in the southern hemisphere, Thailand has completely disappeared from the IRL member list, as have Peru. Uruguay and Ecuador, while Hong Kong, the Solomon Islands and Niue have held on by a thread.

No board member or key decision-maker of the IRL has ever attended domestic matches in South America, a situation mirrored in several other developing territories.

Most worryingly, nations with substantial financial capacity – India and Singapore – both complained their member applications were never resolved despite months of waiting.