Today, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), based in Lausanne (Switzerland) has dismissed the appeal filed by Tonga, against the game\u2019s global ruling body, which sought to overturn a decision to expel the Pacific Islanders from all international competition and revoke its membership of the game\u2019s ruling body.<\/p>\n
At the heart of the row is Tonga\u2019s refusal to comply with the demands of International Rugby League\u2019s top brass, who had called for the urgent adoption of a series of recommendations designed to clean up the game in the country. In addition, Tonga\u2019s attempts to frustrate the investigation \u2013 by refusing to answer questions and cooperate with the inquiry team \u2013 also counted heavily against them.<\/p>\n
The expulsion takes the game into unchartered territory, for never has a country been reprimanded so severely. It comes into force immediately \u2013 putting their participation in the Rugby League World Cup in severe doubt.<\/p>\n
The tournament, which is being hosted in the UK, is scheduled to kick off in October. Although firm outsiders, Tonga were due to play against Papua New Guinea in St Helens on 26 October, with further pool fixtures scheduled against Wales (1 November) and The Cook Islands (7 November).<\/p>\n
Only a year ago, the Tongans recorded one of their greatest-ever victories when they beat world champions Australia in their own back yard.<\/p>\n
Now, unless officials can somehow persuade rugby league chiefs to reconsider today's unambiguous verdict, these games will now not go ahead \u2013 and the national side will become a sporting pariah for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n
Tonga\u2019s rugby league team has been banned from competing at Test level \u2013 meaning it will be unable to take part in this year\u2019s World Cup. Today, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), based in Lausanne (Switzerland) has dismissed the appeal filed by Tonga, against the game\u2019s global ruling body, which sought to overturn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":692,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-content","category-homepage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8459"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8467,"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459\/revisions\/8467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}