WE were invited to a Rugby League World Cup meeting this week in Leigh and I joined our community team in attendance.

Despite being postponed for a year the World Cup promises to be an event that can give a major boost to rugby league. This is the first time ever that Mens, Ladies and Wheelchair World Cups will be played in parallel with the final in the same city of Manchester.

Over 40 per cent of tickets have already been sold and some major sponsors are on board. The BBC are broadcasting all 61 games with 32 of them on either BBC One or BBC Two which compares to only six televised games in the last tournament in Australia.

The purpose of the meeting was twofold. To communicate all the good work that the RFL team have been doing but also to get the clubs and foundations involved so those ticket sales can reach 100 per cent.

Playing games in front of full houses must be the image that the sport wants to portray and the benefits of this should be massive. We all see children with tennis rackets out during Wimbledon and in the same way we are hoping that participation numbers rise, and many new youngsters are introduced to our sport. Not to mention retaining and attracting sponsors and broadcasters.

The Rugby League World Cup trophy. Picture by Mike Boden

The Rugby League World Cup trophy. Picture by Mike Boden

That is why it is so important that the infrastructure is in place, and we are ready for an influx of new participants. It may be that the 13-a-side game with full on tackling against established players isn’t the perfect first route to the game and the Foundations are looking at softer entry levels so that no-one is put off.

That is like the Raider Braves and Raider Girls options that we are currently offering. This is a non-hostile environment with the emphasis simply on getting a ball in your hand and having fun. Children can be signposted to community clubs when the time is right.

Similarly, we know that our Silver Raiders group offers walking rugby as a real option for fitness for some of our senior members and we know that the Masters teams in Barrow do a similar great job in keeping people active in the game.

The WC organisers are hoping that the clubs can directly help by selling hospitality packages for some of the games and introducing additional sponsors. There would be commission opportunities for this.

They are also trying to get foundations to get a WC theme into the school’s curriculum so that children start to learn what they need to but are also being educated about rugby league and there is a trophy tour whereby the clubs could have it on display during a town event, similar to the Olympic flame tour.

To a degree we felt a little isolated at the meeting with no games being awarded to Cumbria for the World Cup. We felt it was difficult to get behind some of the initiatives when our nearest game is in Wigan. We therefore made a strong push to get a warm-up game.

You would imagine most of the competing teams would like a game before the tournament and wouldn’t it be great if we could host Cumbria v Australia or New Zealand.

The organisers have promised to put us in touch with those organising the warm-up games. It has been such a long time since we have hosted an international team and it would be great to have a full house at the Matt Johnson Prestige Stadium seeing some international stars.