Rugby league isn’t at the Olympic Games: but there’s one event you’d definitely enjoy with links to the sport..

Rugby league in the Olympics is a bit of a pipe dream.

It was discussed briefly in advance of Brisbane 2032, with Nines the preferred format to go with rugby union sevens, but was realistically never on the agenda.

That means that, when looking for a sport to follow at Paris 2024, rugby league fans are a little stuck. Sure, there’s sevens, but come on: if they were playing rugby union in your back garden, you’d probably close the curtains. Among league fans, you’d not be the only one.

The best thing about the sevens is that in the women’s game, you get to watch the league stars of the future: three of the Aussie team jumped ship straight after the last Olympics, as rugby union’s funding of their women’s game an ongoing disgrace compared to the leaps and bounds taken in the NRLW.

Other sports don’t go as well. The recent NSW Blues Origin camp saw Jarome Luai fail to surf, having to be fished out of a wave pool.

That wasn’t as disastrous as Robbie Kearns’ attempt at equestrianism in the lead-up to the 1999 series, when he fell off his horse, breaking a collarbone and played no further part in the series.

As a counterbalance, at least Andrew Johns stayed upright while skateboarding half cut after Newcastle’s 1997 Premiership win and you’d have a long list of options if you wanted to enter the boxing, not least that half of the NRL does it as an off-season money spinner.

Instead, let’s make the case for the sport that rugby league actually uses the most in its modern day form: judo.

Perhaps the biggest change in our sport in the professional era has been the implementation of wrestling techniques, and while wrestling is the term we use, in practice, it’s judo we’re talking about.

Plenty of the wrestling coaches come from a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu background these days – none more so than Cronulla Sharks boss Craig Fitzgibbon, who regularly challenges his own players and used to lead the wrestling sessions himself when defence coach at the Roosters.

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But BJJ is essentially a form of judo and, indeed, broke away from it to form its own thing, albeit far less acrimoniously than other sporting splits we can think of.

It was a Japanese judo master who introduced the discipline to Brazil, but the two styles diverged as judo increasingly sought to find a spectator audience and, eventually, acceptance into the Olympics while BJJ calcified into a more ground-based martial art.

But the methods of getting blokes to the floor, then turning them onto their backs while they’re there…it’s basically the same.

The common ground between judo and rugby league is actually longer than you’d think.

While it was in the mid-2000s that the Melbourne Storm were blamed with ruining the sport via the wrestle – aka being good at it when everyone else wasn’t – plenty had been doing it beforehand, with clubs in the UK using judo coaches in the 1990s and indeed before.

The first woman to score at Wembley, Sophie Cox, did so while playing with the boys for Rochdale Schools in 1993 and later represented Great Britain in judo at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and again at London 2012.

Now that we’ve laid the ground work – newaza, if we’re getting technical, since that’s what ground fighting in judo is called – so here comes the hard sell.

For one, judo has rugby league’s commitment to physicality combined with moments of high action.

Tune in and you’ll see a cagey contest that looks relatively benign, only for something spectacular to break out of nowhere in an instant. Innocuous tango dancing one second, upside down the next.

It’s a draining physical contest and a technical game of strategy, both at the same time. Sound like a sport you know? Culturally, judo is based around respecting your opponent, with strict protocols around how you enter and exit the arena.

We’re not quite there yet, but squint at a Penrith prayer circle or a Fijian post-match hymn and you can get the vibe they’re going for.

Etiquette is written into the fabric of the sport, and players can be disqualified for over-celebrating and it is considered bad form to go wild until you’re well off the mat.

It’s the Japanese version of ‘Full credit to the boys’, they gave us a good game, we were lucky to get the result. Humility and respect are everything.

Structurally, too, rugby league fans can appreciate the journey of judo.

This is a sport beloved by those inside it but often ignored by everyone else – and one that has changed its own rules considerably over the years to make itself more palatable to a wider audience. League, more than most, knows what that feels like.

When the action starts, league fans will have plenty to watch.

The Olympic level of judo is intensely technical, with every player the best of the best and thus an expert at everything. The early rounds can be spectacular, but by the medal rounds it’s chess in pyjamas, with plenty of bouts going to golden point.

The fights themselves are often thrust and counterthrust, but when a throw takes place, there’s a decent chance it’ll be something you recognise because rugby league players enact judo throws all the time.

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Anyone who has seen Daly Cherry-Evans second man in tackle knows an o soto gari throw, where a leg goes outside and is used to trip a standing opponent in a big sweeping arc, while we’ve seen plenty of tani otoshi in recent years – that’s a hip-drop, liable to get you a severe talking to from any club judo coach if you try it too much in training but still allowed in competition for elite players.

Both Australia and the UK tend to show the sports that they have a chance of winning, and realistically, judo isn’t one of them with few medal hopes. Chelsie Giles, who won a bronze in Tokyo, is the best shot from either nation.

If you’re a Catalans fan, then you don’t need this explaining to you at all, as Teddy Riner, the hulking 6’8 heavyweight, is already a French national hero, and Clarisse Agbegnenou, a Tokyo gold medallist and six-time world champion, isn’t far behind.

It’ll be front and centre in the host nation, but for the rest of us, judo will be squirrelled away on the streaming service, waiting to be discovered by an intrepid viewer.

And after all – the point of the Olympics is watching a sport you never watch, then ten minutes later, loudly proclaiming that someone is the greatest ever/completely useless/robbed by the refs or a combination of the lot.

If you’re a rugby league fan and pick judo for Paris 2024, you might actually know a little bit of what you’re talking about. Maybe. Sort of.

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