BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — Having another roll in Las Vegas this weekend is a long way from rugby league's first forays into selling the sport to Americans.
A grainy black-and-white newsreel of a bunch of college students in uniforms that covered them from the knees to wrists is stored in the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia under the title “Yanks play rugby league, 1953.”
The U.S. roster for that tour to post-World War II Australia was organized by a wrestling promotor and included a Rhodes scholar on his way to Oxford and an Olympian.
The 13-a-side version of rugby didn't really get a lot of traction in America back then.
So now, National Rugby League organizers are using an NFL playbook to give Americans a taste of the game. They’re taking the show to Las Vegas, for a second consecutive year, hoping it’ll leave a greater legacy for the game.
Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V’Landys issued an invitation to President Donald Trump in a TV interview on Fox & Friends earlier this month.
“Mr. President, we want to introduce you to the toughest game on earth,” V’Landys said. “We know you love physical, tough contact sports. There’s no sport more brutal than rugby league.”
This year, V'Landys is bringing reinforcements. The NRL regular season openers at Allegiant Stadium on Saturday — featuring defending champion Penrith Panthers against Cronulla Sharks and Canberra Raiders against New Zealand Warriors — will be supplemented by a British Super League contest between Wigan and Warrington and a women's international between Australia and England.
There's also a talent combine being held to search for four U.S. players who might make the grade with an NRL club in Australia.
It shouldn't be confused with 15-a-side rugby union. A big rugby split happened in the early 1900s when players demanding compensation for injuries sustained during competitive games helped forge the modified game in Australia and northern England. It was the start of professional rugby league. Rugby union remained fully amateur until the mid-1990s.
The NRL describes the game as “the fastest, most aggressive, ball-in-hand football game that exists.” All players are involved in offense and defense, there's no timeouts, no forward passes and the game is played on a 100-meter field across two 40-minute halves. No pads, no helmets, and plenty of contact.
The NRL put together a video explainer of the rules and regulations, with actor and NRL club owner Russell Crowe narrating. It starts out: "Rugby league is football, but not as you know it."
Last year in Vegas, the Manly Sea Eagles beat Crowe’s South Sydney Rabbitohs 36-24 and Sydney Roosters beat the Brisbane Broncos 20-10 to open the 2024 NRL season.
The NRL has 17 clubs from the far north to the very south of Australia's east coast, as well as the Warriors, based in New Zealand. From 2028, those clubs will be joined by a team from the Pacific Island nation of Papua New Guinea, where rugby league is the national sport.
Jordan Mailata played rugby league as a kid before switching to pursue a career in the NFL. He became the first player from Australia to start in and win the Super Bowl when he helped the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 on Feb. 9.
And speaking of exports, the NFL is returning the favor when it comes to introducing a live version of its game to Australia. During the Super Bowl in New Orleans, the league announced that it will be playing a game in 2026 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, a venue that holds about 100,000 spectators. The Los Angeles Rams will be the home team for that game, part of a multi-year commitment to play in Melbourne.
Wigan is giving up a regular season home game to “host” Warrington in Las Vegas. About 10,000 supporters of the two clubs are expected to be among up to 15,000 fans heading from Britain to the U.S. for the rugby league weekend.
The England-based Rugby League Commercial managing director Rhodri Jones said it's a good chance for the European clubs to join the Southern Hemisphere heavyweights to promote the game.
“New territory, NFL Super Bowl stadium, new fans, heightened media awareness --- all those bits create opportunities," he told The Associated Press. "This isn’t going to conquer America for us. It’s more of a marketing, commercial, audience funnel-growing project.”
“The most ferocious field sport in the world," Jones said. "No pads, the speed, the agility, the skill level, the toughness of the players.”
Warrington Wolves player George Williams is 30 and he never expected to get the chance to play a showcase game like this.
“It’s massive opportunity for Super League," he said. “As players, these are the games that you don’t even think are going to happen. You’ve got to take it with both hands. Enjoy it -- on and off the field -- get amongst it.”
AP Sports Writer Ken Maguire contributed from London.
AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports
FILE - Actor Russell Crowe arrives for the Australian premiere of the movie "The Mummy" in Sydney, Australia, on May 22, 2017. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
New films by Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski, Japanese writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Spain’s Pedro Almodovar will premiere at the 79th Cannes Film Festival next month.
Organizers for the South of France festival, which runs May 12-23, laid out a lineup heavy on big-name international auteurs at a news conference Thursday in Paris.
Cannes’ most sought-after slots are in its competition lineup. This year, 21 films will vie for the Palme d’Or. That includes “Fatherland,” a Cold War drama starring Sandra Hüller by Pawlikowski (“Ida,” “Cold War” ); “Sudden,” the French language debut for Hamaguchi ( “Drive My Car” ); and Almodovar’s “Bitter Christmas.”
Cannes is so far light on Hollywood releases and American filmmakers. One exception in competition is Ira Sachs' “The Man I Love,” a New York tale starring Rami Malek set during the 1980s AIDS crisis. In the Un Certain Regard sidebar, Jane Schoenbrun will unveil their follow-up to 2014’s “I Saw the TV Glow”: “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” about the making of a slasher movie. It stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.
A number of former Palme winners are in the mix. That includes Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu’s Norway-set “Fjord,” starring the recently Oscar-nominated Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan. Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” won the Palme in 2007.
Also returning is Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose 2018 drama “Shoplifters” won the Palme. He’ll debut the sci-fi “Sheep in the Box,” about a grieving couple in the near future who bring home a humanoid boy as their son.
The specialty distributor Neon has already boarded “Fjord,” “Sheep in the Box” and “Sudden,” giving it a chance to extend its historic record of six Palme winners in a row. Last year, the Neon release “It Was Just an Accident,” by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, won the Palme.
Neon is also behind an out of competition selection in “Her Private Hell” by Nicolas Winding Refn, the “Drive” filmmaker. A thriller starring Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton, it's Refn's first feature film since 2016's “The Neon Demon.”
The Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev is also back in the Cannes competition lineup with “Minotaur.” Zvyagintsev's last two films, “Loveless” and “Leviathan,” both debuted at Cannes and went on to land Oscar nominations.
Other competition entries include films by Asghar Farhadi (“Parallel Stories”), Lukas Dhont (“Coward”) and Lazlo Nemes (“Moulin”).
Thierry Fremaux, Cannes’ artistic director, announced the selections in a news conference alongside festival president Iris Knobloch. Fremaux said that 2,541 feature films were submitted for inclusion.
“In this moment, bringing together films and artists from around the world is not a luxury, it’s a necessity," Knobloch said. "Because when the world darkens, we lose our bearings. Showcasing films from all horizons is not a trivial act. It is defending what is most precious to humanity, its ability to dream and think freely.”
Cannes is coming off a 2025 festival that produced a number of Oscar contenders, including two best-picture nominees in Joachim Tier’s “Sentimental Value” and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent.” This year’s Cannes appears well positioned to continue the festival’s stature as the global launching pad of many of the year’s best international films, some of which are bound to show up at next year’s Oscars.
But Hollywood studios appear to be a no-show. Fremaux has said not to expect red carpet premieres like “Top Gun: Maverick” or “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” — both of which made splashy premieres in recent years. This year, Cannes announced ahead of the Paris news conference that John Travolta's directorial debut “Propeller One-Way Night Coach” will debut in the Cannes Premiere section.
“The United States will be present, but the studios will be a bit less so,” Fremaux said. “It’s important to know that when studios are less present at Cannes, it means they are generally less present with the type of cinema that used to allow them to thrive.”
Two prominent American directors will debut documentaries in special screenings: Steven Soderbergh with “John Lennon: The Last Interview” and Ron Howard with “Avedon,” about the photographer Richard Avedon.
Opening the festival, out of competition, is the 1920s French film “The Electric Kiss.” Cannes requires its opening movie to release the same week in French cinemas. And entry to its prestigious competition lineup requires theatrical distribution, a stipulation that — given France’s laws guarding theatrical windows — has excluded Netflix movies and other streaming titles since 2017.
This year, the Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook will preside over the nine-member jury that will decide the Palme. And a pair of honorary Palmes will be handed out, to Barbra Streisand and to Peter Jackson.
Cannes film festival president Iris Knobloch, right, and Cannes film festival delegate general Thierry Fremaux attend a press conference to announce the International Cannes film festival line up for the upcoming 79th edition, Thursday, April 9, 2026 in Paris. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Cannes film festival president Iris Knobloch, right, and Cannes film festival delegate general Thierry Fremaux attend a press conference to announce the International Cannes film festival line up for the upcoming 79th edition, Thursday, April 9, 2026 in Paris. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Cannes film festival president Iris Knobloch, right, and Cannes film festival delegate general Thierry Fremaux pose after a press conference to announce the International Cannes film festival line up for the upcoming 79th edition, Thursday, April 9, 2026 in Paris. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
