‘Fast, brutal, brilliant’: NRL’s Las Vegas gamble comes up trumps

Rugby league may not be the world game - yet - but the NRL's showcase event in Las Vegas has proven it is capable of thriving on a global stage.

Rugby League has a long and sordid history of promising the world and delivering an atlas, the big dreams only matched by the bigger failures to execute. Not any longer. Over 40,000 fans attended the first premiership matches in the United States in what was a dazzling result for the NRL.

The dream of Peter V'Landys to take rugby league to America launched a new reality for the NRL with two outstanding games living up to the unprecedented hype that surrounded the event. The steak matched the sizzle.