COOPER Cronk will celebrate his 34th birthday as an official “Former” Origin Great, after bringing down the curtain on one of the great representative careers with Australia’s 6-0 World Cup final win over England at Suncorp Stadium. Cronk will join long-time halves partner Johnathan Thurston in representative retirement in 2018, but both will continue on
AFTER an all-Queensland NRL grand final, and more than a decade of dominance from the Maroons at State of Origin level, rugby league fans will now have the first “all-Queensland” Rugby League World Cup final. Of course, the showpiece finale of the exceptional World Cup tournament will be played out between Australia and England at
DOUBTS about rugby league’s ability to succeed on the world stage were quickly extinguished over the first weekend of the Rugby League World Cup, with huge audiences tuning in to get their fix of footy. While international rugby league has been maligned for a long time, as it lived in the shadow of the behemoth
MAROON-in-waiting Felise Kaufusi has surged into the representative arena on the back of the Storm’s successful season as one of the bolters in Mal Meninga’s 24-man Kangaroos squad for the Rugby League World Cup. Queensland’s 18th man in Game 3 of this year’s State of Origin series, Kaufusi will make his senior representative debut in
QUEENSLAND’S State of Origin future has become a premature reality after Johnathan Thurston joined fellow greats Matt Scott and Greg Inglis on a worrying Maroons injured list ahead of this year’s series. Thurston, who overcame a calf tear to play in Australia’s 30-12 Anzac Test thumping of New Zealand, suffered a suspected tear in his
AUSTRALIAN coach Mal Meninga says the amazing depth of talent available for this year’s Anzac Test against New Zealand shows why a return to traditional Kangaroo Tours should be a priority for rugby league. Meninga is planning for the May 5 clash with the Kiwis knowing he will be without senior players Matt Scott and
MAL Meninga insists his job as Australian coach has only just begun despite the Kangaroos’ crushing win over New Zealand in the Four Nations final at Anfield. The Kangaroos were never really challenged on their way to their 34-8 victory, the Australians producing their best form in the final game of an arduous 11-month season.
THE showdown the rugby league world has been waiting for is upon us, and Kangaroos coach Mal Meninga could not be happier. Meninga ignited a Four Nations firestorm with his recent column in The Courier-Mail newspaper, where he laid bare the fractured friendship between himself and England coach Wayne Bennett. Meninga, as always, did not
REPRESENTATIVE football clearly agrees with Greg Inglis. The Queensland superstar, who always seems to produce his best while wearing the Maroon jumper, showed he is no slouch in the green and gold either with a man of the match performance in Australia’s 26-6 win over New Zealand in the Perth Test. The Western Australian capital’s
FORMER Queensland State of Origin captain Trevor “The Axe” Gillmeister is officially “back in the game”, joining Mal Meninga’s coaching staff with the Australian Kangaroos for the Prime Minister’s XIII match against PNG and the end-of-year Four Nations tournament in the UK. Gillmeister, captain of one of the Maroons’ greatest victories in the 1995 clean
