RUGBY league has been all but invisible in Hong Kong and Asia, other than among a few die-hard expatriate fans from the game's strongholds in northern England and Australia.
This does not seem to bother the people at Sports Corp, the division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp that is busy preparing to launch the Super League next year.
Murdoch clearly believes the game has a huge potential worldwide, including Asia. Sports Corp recently placed advertisements in Australian newspapers looking for would-be Super League commentators fluent in Mandarin, Hindi and even Vietnamese, who were 'knowledgeable lovers of the game.' Mandarin is rich in imagery but as far as anyone can tell there are no terms to cover expressions like 'He's a right Neville' [a nobody in the game] and 'Brick goes for the biff' [a certain player is punching his opposite number].
