You'll feel right at home with a front private bedroom that includes a door to the dual entry bath. Pack up the kids or grandkids and get ready for fun. This travel trailer is perfect for your next vacation or weekend getaway. We might see Mitchell Moses back with Lebanon though, when they finally play their first game under new coach Michael Cheika, against Malta on 22 June.Venture Stratus Ultra-Lite travel trailer SR261VRK highlights: Not all will be chosen by Australia coach Mal Meninga in October, of course, but with James in the NSW team we can assume the only Tedesco who might play for Italy this year will be his brother Matt. As predicted, 12 of this week’s New South Wales Origin squad have been capped by other nations: four from Fiji and Samoa, two Tongans, and one each from Italy and Wales. The Pacific nations who face off later this month in mid-season internationals are likely to be a “lite” version of their World Cup starting teams. Without that buy-in from the NRL, the World Club Challenge will remain another file in rugby league’s bulging nostalgia files. “It should be a two-to six team tournament sold to local authorities, hopefully in a neutral country, but locked into the same weekend every year.” The venture would have to be a jointly owned by the two leagues, with costs and revenues shared. Mascord would like to see it become a valuable, popular asset. These fixtures were nirvana for rugby league nerds, fantasy fixtures never to be repeated. Fewer than 2,000 fans saw Hunter Mariners thrash Sheffield Eagles, and a mere 959 were bothered by the time Paris Saint-Germain beat Perth Reds. Oldham were watched by 14,000 at Adelaide. Wigan pulled in around 45,000 for their four home games and London drew more than 30,000 to the Stoop for their four – crowds the club would never match again. Unsurprisingly, the novelty soon wore off. “The gulf in standards was as great then as it is today – and they should have known that.” “It was a mad idea,” Mascord reflects now. Current Scotland coach Nathan Graham, the Bulls’ emergency hooker in that quarter-final humiliation, still loved it: “It was probably a crazy idea but spending that time together was a great experience.” Wayne Bennett told Mascord it was probably one of the best three weeks of his life. Some teams partied harder than they tackled. Knowing what was coming on the field in Australia, the visiting players ensured they had a whale of time off it – which didn’t help. Martin Offiah is tackled during a game between Brisbane Broncos and London Broncos. There had to be four European teams in the quarter-finals, so Penrith were eliminated even though they had won all six of their group games, while Bradford lost all six yet qualified! The Bulls’ reward? A return trip to Auckland 10 weeks after being smashed 64-14 there in a group game. In contrast, Wigan were the only European side to win twice. Five Australian teams went unbeaten in the group stage and two only lost once. The English and French sides lost nine of the first round of games and 52 out of the 60 international meetings. “Within one weekend the arse fell out of it and we never recovered,” said referees boss Greg McCallum. A jet-lagged London Broncos team containing Shaun Edwards, Martin Offiah and a dozen Australians were beating Brisbane Broncos, their owners, at half-time but collapsed in the second half reigning champions St Helens were hammered at home unbeaten league leaders Bradford were thrashed. The opening night was a cataclysmic preview of what was to come, as the best sides the UK had to offer were annihilated. That was handy as it wasn’t particularly sporting. “To cut a long story short, it was a disaster.” I said ‘Fucking hell – they’ll get destroyed.’” Lindsay was right. Lindsay claimed he had arranged for the best three English clubs from Super League’s debut season – Wigan, St Helens and Bradford – to play Australia’s best three but “Wood got up and said ‘we all play, all 12 clubs, or nobody plays’. Never slow to accept praise for successes, nor quick to acknowledge his failed ventures, the late Maurice Lindsay – Super League chairman at the time – admitted to Mascord: “We did a stupid thing”, but immediately added that it was “Nigel Wood’s fault”. Now he has gone back to speak with 100 of the people involved. He was reporting on the ‘Super League War’ every day for the Sydney Morning Herald and loved it. In his new book Two Tribes, Steve Mascord recalls the event in 1997 with unashamed relish. But it is remembered with perverse enjoyment by many who were there to play, coach, report or watch it. Ill-thought, illogical and elongated, the World Club Championship was a car crash of a tournament.
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