Australia cannot be the only winners

The hottest of favourites threaten a ruthless four-week procession, but the game as a whole needs a carnival

There is bad news for those unadventurous souls who fancy backing Australia to win the World Cup. They are too late. Bookmakers have either stopped taking bets or are offering odds so derisory that one would get a better return from a Post Office savings account.

There is bad news for those unadventurous souls who fancy backing Australia to win the World Cup. They are too late. Bookmakers have either stopped taking bets or are offering odds so derisory that one would get a better return from a Post Office savings account.

There was a time when even hard-headed Australian coaches like Frank Stanton and Bob Fulton used to be vaguely apologetic about trampling all and sundry. Not so Chris Anderson, even after his side had beaten a New Zealand Residents' XIII 108-0 last weekend to bring the tally in their three warm-up matches to 242-0.

No Crocodile Dundee tears from Anderson, a canny outback bloke who knows the British game from his time at Halifax. It was perfectly fine, he said, that Australia were takingall-comers to the cleaners. "In the next six matches, it would be good not to concede a point," he said after the rout of the New Zealand outfit.

His sentiments are neither humble nor diplomatic, but many fear that they might be an honest appraisal. Australia could romp through the Lincoln World Cup with embarrassing ease, reducing rugby league's most ambitiously global event to a one-dimensional farce.

As ever, they have sensational players - and they have them in frightening depth. From Darren Lockyer at full-back to Gorden Tallis in the second row, they field worldbeaters. If Anderson has a problem, it is how to arrange his three principal creative players - Brad Fittler, Andrew Johns and Brett Kimmorley - to get the best out of all of them.

If Australia are to fall foul of anything, it could be their own recent success. Not only do they look on British sides - like England, their Twickenham opponents on Saturday - as their natural whipping boys, they now also have little regard for the Kiwis.

The last time the two sides met, earlier this year, the Aussies ran in 52 points - without reply, naturally. What they have conveniently forgotten is that the New Zealand preparation was as bad as it could have been and that on plenty of other occasions, Frank Endacott's side have been wellcapable of beating them. Australia might get away with underestimating England on Saturday - both should qualify in any event - but they could just pay the price if they take the Kiwis for granted.

The one problem with that encouraging theory is that New Zealand's preparation has again been far from ideal. Not only will their squad not be reunited with Endacott - who has been kept in England by his Wigan duties - until Tuesday, they are also coming here fresh from a political row, with the problems of the Auckland Warriors threatening to provoke some players into withdrawing from the World Cup. Endacott is convinced that will not happen, but he cannot get his players into his charismatic orbit quickly enough. Whether he can get them into fighting trim in time is a thorny question.

The Kiwis will certainly qualify from their Welsh-based group. It is far from certain that Wales will be with them. The unavailability of ex-rugby union players - who are now born-again rugby union players - leaves them short of star names. Apart from Iestyn Harris and Keiron Cunningham, they look merely workmanlike, and they are not guaranteed to beat the Cook Islands or Lebanon.

Ireland look an altogether more optimistic proposition. Playing in Belfast and Dublin and full of their country's traditional team ethic, they could see off Scotland, Samoa and the New Zealand Maori, with those three scrapping for second place. Terry O'Connor, an inspired choice as captain, has no doubt that the natives will warm to his side, who are as Irish born and bred as Jack Charlton's better teams. "People here love their sport hard and physical," he said. "And it won't get any harder and more physical than this group."

The French pool, also involving South Africa, Papua New Guinea and Tonga, has the potential to run it close. The hosts should make it through, alongside the Pacific nation which copes better with the dip in temperature.

By the time we reach the quarter-finals, it will be clear whether the 2000 World Cup is destined to be a success. It is all too easy to point to a list of venues that includes Llanelli, Gloucester, Reading and Edin-burgh, but not Wigan or Bradford, and predict disaster. Yes, some games will only draw modest crowds, but that would have been true of the CookIslands versus Lebanon, say, wherever it had been played.

It would have been perfectly possible to organise a World Cup along the M62 corridor. It would have been simpler to run; and it would have done absolutely nothing for the long-term health of the game.

The promise of this tournament is that the code will not simply dip in and out of faraway places, as it has been guilty of doing in the past. The games played out of the mainstream are supposed to be development vehicles, with activity kept going after the big top leaves town, not stopped dead with the final hooter, as has been the case with too many initiatives.

That, rather than how many points Australia score, will be the real test of this World Cup. And if the Australians do what we fear they might, it is even more important that the tournament passes it.