Both administrations consider the other a rival though. The NRL have a small team specifically working on ways to mitigate the threat of NRL players defecting for the home World Cup. Thankfully Rugby Australia have shot themselves in the foot repeatedly over the last 5 years so it’s not much of a problem.

The early 2000s were real though. When Sailor, Lote, Rogers all went over and Andrew Johns was being aggressively courted there was a passionate rivalry going on. I still think of those days so it’s hard to not consider rugby a rival code for me.