By DAVE HADFIELD Herald correspondent
LONDON - British Super League is seeking reassurance that a threatened players' strike in Australia will not claim the World Club Challenge between St Helens and Brisbane as its first victim.
The champions of the northern and southern hemispheres are due to play each other at
Bolton on January 26, two weeks before the Australian season gets under way.
But the Broncos' players yesterday became the first to meet representatives of the Rugby League Players' Association (RLPA) to discuss the possibility of withdrawing their labour.
The players' union is unhappy about the plight of colleagues left stranded by the change of ownership at the Auckland Warriors and the National Rugby League's alleged failure to set up a promised hardship fund.
"Unfortunately, we have reached the point where, unless there is some concrete assurance that the NRL will act, the players will have to take matters into their own hands to demonstrate how strongly we feel," said the RLPA's chairman, Tony Butterfield.
"The initial negotiations over the Auckland affair were only begun after players in the World Cup threatened to boycott the tournament. It may well be this type of action by players is all that will make administrators take notice and, more importantly, take some action."
The Super League's spokesman, Andrew Whitelam, said that he was unaware of any threat to the World Club Challenge.
"We had a communication from Brisbane earlier today which makes no reference to any problems and talks in detail about arrangements for next week. We will certainly be looking into it," he said.
The Broncos are due to fly to England on Sunday and, provided industrial action does not intervene, one initiative already planned is for their coach, Wayne Bennett, to give a "masterclass" to 16 aspiring British coaches.
The session has been organised by the Rugby League's international coaching consultant, David Waite, who said: "Wayne Bennett is without doubt the leading club coach in the world. It is an ideal chance for some of the British game's best up-and-coming coaches to swap ideas and listen to the man who has done it for so long at the top of the world's toughest rugby competition."
