Friday 23 October 2015 11:45, UK
Steve McNamara hopes his England side can restore some northern hemisphere pride when they face New Zealand in a three-Test series.
England's union side crashed out of their home World Cup in the group stage, and the quarter-finals proved too big a hurdle for Scotland, Wales, France and Ireland to cross.
McNamara's men begin their series against the beaten 2013 World Cup finalists in Hull on Sunday week and he would love to engineer victory over the Kiwis to start rebuilding some national sporting pride.
"We're all patriotic about our national teams, rugby union, football, whatever it maybe, and we're all disappointed when we don't quite succeed at international level." said McNamara, whose side first face France on Saturday.
"After the huge build-up to the World Cup, not just England but all the northern hemisphere teams failed to make the semi-finals so it does give us an opportunity this time around.
"The international stage is brilliant for us in rugby league in terms of raising our profile and creating a bit of awareness of our sport in this country and we probably have no better opportunity to maximise that than right now."
England created a massive stir two years ago when they went within 20 seconds of reaching the 2013 World Cup final, only to be denied by Shaun Johnson's last-gasp try and conversion for New Zealand at Wembley.
They were also on the wrong end of an agonising loss to the new world No 1 ranked team in the 2014 Four Nations Series and New Zealand coach Stephen Kearney admits his opposite number has not had the best of luck against his side.
"Watching the English side over the last two years, they haven't had a great deal of good fortune," Kearney said.
"There was the last couple of minutes in that semi-final, they should have beaten Australia in Melbourne last year and it was a toss of a coin in our match in Dunedin. So we understand it's a big challenge facing us."
England's rugby league fans have had to wait almost two years to see their national team in action on home soil, a frustration also felt by the Sydney-based McNamara.
"The World Cup was an unbelievable event for everybody involved," he said. "We were desperate to play again as quickly as we could on home soil. We had a lot of momentum behind the team at that stage.
"Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, that didn't happen but we do get a chance now and we need to maximise that opportunity."
