Kangaroos coach Mal Meninga has thrown his weight behind plans to reduce the length of the NRL season to give international rugby league a chance to fulfil its potential.
Meninga on Wednesday became the latest voice to call for the NRL regular season to be trimmed down to 19 rounds to reduce player fatigue and increase exposure to Test match football.
The international game is experiencing a boom after the 2022 Rugby League World Cup, with the rise of the Pacific nations creating greater interest and more competition than ever before.
Samoa, who lost to Australia in the 2022 World Cup final, are conducting their first Test tour of England.
Tonga put up an impressive fight in an 18-0 loss to Australia in last week’s Pacific Championships opener in front of a 33,000-strong crowd in Brisbane.
Australia face New Zealand, who won last year’s Pacific Championships title, at a sold-out Apollo Projects Stadium in Christchurch on Sunday.
Both sides are short of some of their top-line players due to the demands of a taxing NRL season.
And Meninga feels the players’ pain and wants to see the NRL ease the load.
The Kangaroos coach said reducing the regular season to 19 rounds when the NRL admits three further teams would also give Test rugby league its day in the sun.
"The players’ welfare is in the front of everyone's mind, maybe a shorter domestic season (would work),” Meninga said.
“Going to 20 teams I think works with 19 rounds.
“I think that's really important, provided broadcasters like that idea.
“You get the State of Origin, you get pre-season, finals footy and then you get your national team programs.
“So when you get your 19 games, instead of 27 rounds you've got eight weeks, a window, there’s an opportunity to expand the game internationally.”
Meninga said creating such a window would allow the Kangaroos and other Test nations to play northern hemisphere line-ups on a more regular basis.
Outside of World Cups, Australia have not played England since the 2014 Four Nations and have not taken on France in a Test since 2009.
“We’ve obviously got the (Las) Vegas experiment going on, which went really well,'' Meninga said.
“So if you go to France, South Africa or go to the Middle East in the air-conditioned stadiums - play against the English side - they travel halfway, we travel halfway.
“It’s up to our imagination, but if we can take our game to new areas we can create some interest in it.”
