England wheelchair side remain in World Cup title hunt after 98-18 win in Wollongong
England's wheelchair rugby league team opened their 2026 Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup campaign with a 98-18 victory over Wales at the Win Entertainment Centre in Wollongong and are targeting a place in the final on 13 November.
The result offers respite for English rugby league supporters following early exits for the men's and women's teams and announcements of soul-searching reviews, while the wheelchair side arrive in Australia as the reigning world champions. This is the fifth staging of the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup; England have reached every final and have won the tournament twice, in 2008 and four years ago on home soil.
Rob Hawkins leads the current England squad and enters the tournament fresh from winning the Wheels of Steel award as the Wheelchair Super League's best player. The 25-year-old helped Halifax Panthers to the Grand Final and was part of England's 2022 winning team; he scored 11 of England's 18 tries in the opening match against Wales.
Luis Domingos, an ex-Portugal basketball international who changed sport and country, represents Sheffield Eagles and England in the squad. Jack Brown spent five and a half years living in Australia coaching wheelchair rugby league while working as a welder in the Queensland mines; he has given up his full-time job to focus on the sport and, after the World Cup, will become Wakefield wheelchair head coach next season.
Several players in the England group have overcome severe personal setbacks to compete at international level. Finlay O'Neill, who dislocated his knee aged 16 and was forced to retire from running rugby league, joined Halifax Panthers three years ago and said: "If you'd said to me when I was told I couldn't play rugby league again that it's going to be the best thing to ever happen to me, I'd have said 'you're lying'." He added: "Discovering wheelchair rugby league, which is even better, has been a blessing."
Wheelchair rugby league follows similar basic principles to the running game but with distinct rules: teams of five players have six tackles to score; tackles on the ball carrier are made by pulling a tag from a player's shirt; a try is worth four points and penalties and conversions two points, the latter taken by punching the ball off a tee over the posts. The game uses an oval ball, lasts 80 minutes, and allows a maximum of two non-disabled and three disabled players on the field at any one time.
Europe currently holds the balance of power in the wheelchair game, with France England's main title rivals after the pair met in the last three finals — France won in 2013 and 2017 before losing 28-24 in Manchester four years ago. Ireland, ranked third in the world, began their campaign with a 110-10 victory over the USA, while Australia, who are hosting every match in Wollongong, fielded what has been described as their strongest-ever squad and beat New Zealand 112-14 in their Group B opener. Bayley McKenna, Australia's first non-disabled captain who took up the sport in 2006 to support his paralysed father, said he received abusive messages during the last World Cup: "I would have copped about a dozen messages from people all around the world saying, 'you're a fraud, you shouldn't even be in the chair, this is a sport for disabled people'," he told ABC. "These guys were coming at me, like, 'you're lucky you're not out there on the street by yourself'. "There is such a stigma around able-bodied athletes playing in wheelchairs. It is ridiculous. I'd be lying to you if I said I was going into this World Cup not expecting it." England's Jack Brown is also a non-disabled player who entered the sport alongside a disabled family member, his brother, and Australia gave England a couple of good games in a two-match Test series last year.
England's next match in Group A is against the USA on Tuesday, where they will look to follow their opening result and progress through the tournament toward the final scheduled for 13 November.