The end of the last week and results have come through for the Maltese, Lebanese and French competitions. In Australia historical events are unfolding with an independent commission to run the sport in that country, while in Lebanon war broke out again… but this time on the Rugby League field.
This week the top Rugby League clubs in Australia signed off unanimously on a New Rugby league commission to be set up to run the game in that country.
But the clubs themselves are now putting pressure on the commission to be installed and running by the time the new season start in march. We shall wait and see what happens.
In good news for the New South Wales Origin team, Neil Henry quit the Maroons this week. Well that’s one less tormenter.
As mentioned in the introduction last weekend Bank of Beirut Championships in Lebanon was marred in violence. 38 minutes into the match between AUST and AUB Rabie El Masri was winded in a tackle and his brother Ahmad El Masri took offence to it. Long live the biff hey. The match was 6-4 to AUB at the time. No word on what will happen with the results.
In the other match the Wolves fought on bravely but were defeated in the end by Jounieh 34-14 in their match. The table stand currently as:
| Team | P | W | D | L | PD | PT | |
| 1 | LAU | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 276 | 8 |
| 2 | Balamand | 5 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 58 | 6 |
| 3 | Jounieh | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 40 | 6 |
| 4 | AUB | 4 | 2 | 0 | 2 | -7 | 4 |
| 5 | USJ | 4 | 2 | 0 | 2 | -58 | 4 |
| 6 | Wolves | 5 | 1 | 0 | 4 | -113 | 2 |
| 7 | AUST | 5 | 0 | 0 | 5 | -158 | 0 |
On another happier note for Lebanese Rugby League, this week saw the latest Club team play their forst game. The LIU (Lebanese International University) played a game against the Balamand team. They played well but were outclassed by the veteran team 54-0.
Also in Qatar the Lebanese U16’s squad played the Qatar Schools select team and in an absolute thriller went down 34-32 in Doha.
Round 11 was completed and pretty much matches went to script except maybe for the Carcassonne match. They beat the number 1 team Lezignan in a thrashing 40-14. Limoux had a good win over Avignon 52- 12. Pia also thrashes bottom dwellers St. Gaudens 50-10 while Villeneuve and UTC played out a tight contest 23-18. Carpentras had the bye this week. The table stands as:
| Team | P | W | D | L | B | PD | PT | |
| 1 | Lezignan | 10 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 90 | 25 |
| 2 | Pia | 10 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 139 | 23 |
| 3 | Carcassonne | 10 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 83 | 21 |
| 4 | Limoux | 10 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 89 | 19 |
| 5 | Villeneuve | 10 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 14 | 18 |
| 6 | UTC | 10 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 1 | -29 | 17 |
| 7 | Avignon | 10 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 1 | -132 | 14 |
| 8 | Carpentras | 10 | 2 | 0 | 6 | 2 | -26 | 12 |
| 9 | St. Gaudens | 10 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 1 | -194 | 11 |
Round 3 of the Maltese championships was played and South came out very close winners once again in a very high scoring match, 56-52. They lead the table against North 2-1 now. Table is:
| Team | P | W | D | L | PD | PT | |
| 1 | South | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 8 | 4 |
| 2 | North | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 | -8 | 2 |
Soon I will be starting a new monthly series of blogs where I will talk about some of my travels to exotic places in Europe to watch rugby league. It will be called The Travellers and Food Lovers guide to Rugby League. I will talk a bit about the city and what to do there, how to get there, places to see and eat and what games I saw or can be seen there. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed going there!
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