The Sydney Football Stadium is as modern a football temple as you’ll find, but Australia’s opening match in the 2026 Rugby League World Cup was like a trip back in time.
The game against New Zealand was played in the shadow of the Sydney Cricket Ground, where the Kangaroos have played ever since rugby league arrived in Australia in 1908.
It remains the site of so many sepia-toned memories of furious, blood-and-thunder battles because Test matches were the biggest, best and most brutal spectacles the game had to offer.
They would give these matches names like the Rorke’s Drift Test or the Swinton Massacre, making them sound like wars.
Those days are past, swallowed by the twin beasts of State of Origin and the ever-expanding club competition, but last night’s 24-22 win for Australia is proof they can live again, even if only for a night.
The crowd of 41,225 was the biggest attendance for any Test match in Sydney since 1974, and this was a game that reminded everyone of how it used to be as the two teams put on an utter classic.
The journey to the green and gold’s victory was studded with indelible moments like Casey McLean’s acrobatic opening effort and the twin length-of-the-field intercept efforts from Jack Bostock and Tom Trbojevic.
Tom Trbojevic scored one of Australia’s two length-of-the-field intercepts. (Getty Images: Matt King)
But none were better than Kalyn Ponga’s three battles with Reece Walsh, which were the kind of one-on-one duels that exist in the brief moments when a team game becomes an individual sport.
If they were gunslingers, this would have been high noon.
Walsh won their first meeting, bundling Ponga over the sideline in a try-saving tackle after the Kiwi debutant made a break in the first half.
But Ponga’s revenge was beautiful. In the second half, after slicing through again, he left Walsh chasing ghosts with a left-foot step they should write songs about en route to scoring his second try of the night.
It was a glorious moment, but few bathe in glory like Walsh.
His reply was a length-of-the-field effort in which he stepped Ponga and Jahrome Hughes so comprehensively they ran into each other.
It was a gut-busting effort from Walsh, literally. He went for the technicolour yawn afterwards, so much so that Latrell Mitchell had to take the sideline conversion.
In the end, it was Bostock’s third try, the Dolphin flyer’s debut for good measure, sealing the deal for Australia as the World Cup began with one of the best matches — NRL, Origin or otherwise — of recent times.
It was a spectacle a long time coming. This was the Kangaroos’ first game at the new SFS, which has been open for four years.
It was their first game against New Zealand in Sydney since 2014, and they’d only played there twice in the past decade before last night.
That absence began as a symptom of the decline in fan interest in the national side — the punters just stopped showing up — until it became a cause.
Jack Bostock was magnificent in his Test debut. (Getty Images: Matt King )
Taking the show on the road is important, and in recent years Australia has played all across its own land and beyond. They are a team for the nation, not just for the cities with the big, fancy stadiums.
But to stay in people’s hearts and minds, to feel large in the life of a sport, to remind them how big this can be and how important it’s supposed to feel, sometimes you need to play the old songs, the ones everyone used to know, in the big house.
Australia has so many wins it’s hard for them to stand out, but this one will. Apart from Bostock’s two aerial efforts, every try they scored originated inside their own quarter as they ran to victory from the back of beyond.
New Zealand will be filthy with itself for losing a game where its vaunted forward pack did everything it was expected to do as it trampled all over Australia.
Australia and New Zealand are expected to meet again in the final. (Getty Images: Cameron Spencer )
The Kiwis finished with five line breaks to one, and more than 300 extra run metres. They scored 22 points but left more on the board with some sub-par execution in the attacking 20.
A poor end to a set from Hughes, who had plenty of time on the last inside the red zone but came up with a kick that led to a seven-tackle set before Bostock’s leap to heaven, will loom large in their minds.
Against Australia, even if they lose a key player like Mitchell Moses to injury, even if their forwards get bashed, and even if they’re the better team for great swathes of the game, you cannot ever give them an inch.
They can and will get better. After talk about the Kiwis and the Pasifika nations dominated the lead-up, Australia reminded us all that it is still its tournament to lose.
Tom Bostock was man of the match in a famous Test debut. (Getty Images: Matt Kind )
A rematch between these two in the final seems likely, but it’s a long road to get there. Ponga’s late departure with a suspected broken arm might put paid to the Kiwis’ chances of claiming a second World Cup.
But before we look to the future, let us sit in the present a little longer as we bask in this glorious reminder of the past.
This was the good stuff. This is what it’s all about. This is how it used to be and perhaps can be again.
One great match does not make a World Cup, and the international game cannot be taken back to its most legendary nights in just 80 minutes, no matter how good they might be.
Rugby league needs more of this: the best teams in the world, filled with the best players dancing on the edge of the blade, in the biggest and best stadiums when the stakes are highest.
It’s a simple recipe, but the appetite for it is mighty. The crowd alone is proof of that, and there should be more of it to come.
Samoa and Tonga are almost certain to provide it when they play the latest round of a rivalry older than time in their sold-out pool match in a fortnight.
The semifinals, which will almost definitely pit Australia and New Zealand against one of the two island nations or England, have the potential to be like the tournament opener.
In rebuilding the prestige of international football — its oldest treasure — the sport can strike gold again.
Rugby league gave up that prize once when it took Test matches for granted for years.
What happened last night gives it an electrifying shot in the arm and a taste of what it gave up, a sin this epic Australian victory proves would be madness to repeat.
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