1995 Rugby League World Cup

Data last verified: 11 August 2026.

1995 Rugby League World Cup ▾

1995 Rugby League World Cup result: Australia won the title, beating England 16–8 in the final. Hosted by England & Wales.

Full match archive (15 games)

Groups

Group A

TeamPWDLPFPADiffPtsForm
England330011216+966WWW
Australia320116826+1424LWW
Fiji310252118-662WLL
South Africa300312184-1720LLL
DateResultVenueAttendance
7 Oct 1995England 20–16 AustraliaWembley Stadium, London, England41,271
8 Oct 1995Fiji 52–6 South AfricaCougar Park, Keighley, England4,845
10 Oct 1995Australia 86–6 South AfricaGateshead International Stadium, Gateshead, England9,181
11 Oct 1995England 46–0 FijiCentral Park, Wigan, England26,263
14 Oct 1995Australia 66–0 FijiMcAlpine Stadium, Huddersfield, England7,127
14 Oct 1995England 46–0 South AfricaHeadingley Rugby Stadium, Leeds, England14,041

Group B

TeamPWDLPFPADiffPtsForm
New Zealand22004730+174WW
Tonga20115253-11LD
Papua New Guinea20113450-161DL
DateResultVenueAttendance
8 Oct 1995New Zealand 25–24 TongaWilderspool Stadium, Warrington, England8,083
10 Oct 1995Papua New Guinea 28–28 TongaThe Boulevard, Hull, England5,121
13 Oct 1995New Zealand 22–6 Papua New GuineaKnowsley Road, St Helens, England8,679

Group C

TeamPWDLPFPADiffPtsForm
Wales22005016+344WW
Western Samoa21016632+342WL
France20021684-680LL
DateResultVenueAttendance
9 Oct 1995Wales 28–6 FranceNinian Park, Cardiff, Wales10,250
12 Oct 1995Western Samoa 56–10 FranceNinian Park, Cardiff, Wales2,173
15 Oct 1995Wales 22–10 Western SamoaVetch Field, Swansea, Wales15,385

Knockout stage

Semi-final

DateResultVenueAttendance
21 Oct 1995England 25–10 WalesOld Trafford, Manchester, England30,042
22 Oct 1995Australia 30–20 New ZealandAlfred McAlpine Stadium, Huddersfield, England16,608

Final

DateResultVenueAttendance
28 Oct 1995Australia 16–8 EnglandWembley Stadium, London, England66,540

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Tournament facts

HostEngland & Wales
Dates7–28 October 1995
Teams10
Games played15
Players used210
Average crowd17,707

Teams (10)

Australia, England, Fiji, France, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Tonga, Wales, Western Samoa

Context

Officially the "Halifax Centenary World Cup," staged to mark rugby league's 100th anniversary.

Rugby league's centenary tournament returned to a single discrete-event format after two three-year, Test-embedded cycles, and widened the field to ten teams, with Fiji, South Africa, Tonga and Western Samoa all winning their first World Cup caps. Australia won a fifth straight title, 16-8 over hosts England at Wembley, despite fielding what many regarded as a second-string squad — the code's Super League war meant several contracted stars were unavailable for national selection at the time. Coach Bob Fulton picked up his fifth World Cup win, and a 21-year-old Andrew Johns was named man of the match. South Africa's single appearance to date came in this tournament, part of a short-lived push to grow the code beyond its traditional heartlands during the code's mid-1990s international expansion era. Australia's understrength selection was itself a direct casualty of the brewing Super League war: the ARL refused to select any player contracted to the rival Super League competition, leaving Fulton to field a young Kangaroos side with eleven of its seventeen players under 24. Despite widespread pre-tournament fears that the expanded, ten-team, three-group format would produce unwatchable mismatches, the event was broadly acclaimed a success, with the pool involving Wales in particular drawing larger, more enthusiastic home crowds than organisers had expected — an outcome that gave the sport's administrators real confidence heading into the even bigger, sixteen-team expansion attempted at the very next World Cup in 2000.

Sources

← 1989–1992 Rugby League World Cup2000 Rugby League World Cup →

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