If international rugby league is to become what it promises to be, the best must still be yet to come for both Australia, Tonga and the game itself.

The 18-0 Kangaroos victory to kick off the men’s Pacific Championships was every inch a tournament opener. The football was high on effort and muscle and a little lower on precision. The atmosphere was fiery but crying out for a spark that never quite lit.

Before the match you could feel the sense of occasion through Lang Park, because a game like this has been a long time coming. Australia has spent plenty of time on the road in recent years and have barely appeared on the sport’s biggest stages in their home country.

Over the past eight years, they’ve played the same number of games in Coventry, England as they have in Sydney and Brisbane combined.

This was their first match at the Cauldron since the 2017 World Cup final and the first time they’d ever played Tonga on home soil.

International rugby league’s prolonged absence from two of the sport’s flagship cities might contribute to why the pre-match discourse was dominated by questions as to why there was no discourse to speak of.

But given the crowd of 33,196 is the largest for any match ever involving Tonga, it is clear there is an appetite for these games and for the sensations they summon and the NRL needs to feed it.

The recipe to doing so is clear – if rugby league can take the colour, noise and connection to community teams like Tonga can provide and marry that up with games that feel like they matter, the rest will take care of itself.

These days, the former is just about a guarantee whenever and wherever Mate Ma’a travel. The Sipi Tau, the singing in the crowd and the flags and fans who form a red sea even Moses couldn’t part, these are not things you see or hear, they are things you feel and never forget.

The spirit is palpable, the air grows thick with it and even on a humid Brisbane night it sends a chill down the spine, no matter how many times it’s happened before.

The action on the field was hard and willing, but both sides looked short of a run and will be better for this one.

This is a new-look Australia side, with only two players retaining their jersey numbers from last year’s humiliating loss to New Zealand, and as such they’re still a work in progress.

Tom Trbojevic played his first Test in six years and looked great doing it, getting through a mountain of work, scoring a try and throwing the last pass for another.

Isaah Yeo put in a fine captain’s knock in his first match as skipper and Harry Grant looked better and better as the Tongan legs got heavier.

Zac Lomax, Xavier Coates and Tom Dearden all put in hard shifts on debut. Mitchell Moses was a bit scratchy in his first game in three months and Dylan Edwards had a rare off night with his hands – something he wasn’t alone in – but in the end it was the Kangaroos’ craft that saved them.

Putting aside Dearden’s late score, when he left some exhausted defenders grasping for the very air they gasped for, Australia’s tries came via an intercept and one fine backline spread that created just enough space for Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow to ghost past Paul Alamoti and score in the corner.

That might not sound like much but it was more than Tonga could find, which means it’s more than enough.

Tonga was not without its own moments and its strengths are so blindingly obvious they’re impossible to miss. The forward power speaks for itself and it does so very loudly.

Jason Taumalolo recalled the form that once made him the leader of a Tongan revolution and, be it in attack or defence, Haumole Olakau’atu played with a beautiful, controlled violence that left Kangaroos sprawled on the ground wondering what happened to them. 

There were great moments of desire, stirring second efforts and try-savers but muscle and spirit have never been in short supply for Tonga. To break down Australia you need to take your chances and Kristian Woolf’s side couldn’t do it.

Tui Lolohea is a Tongan hero of the past – he was granted lands in his families ancestral village by King Tupou VI after the 2017 World Cup – but the intercept he threw to Tom Trbojevic was a backbreaker because it meant Tonga trailed 6-0 at the break despite having the better of the opening stanza.

Isaiya Katoa is the future of the team and he has it in him to one day lead them to dizzying heights. But right now he is still a 20-year old, a prince who must do a king’s job and the head that wears the crown can be so heavy. 

Halves of that age can have their off days and the Dolphins phenom wore one. His boot is powerful, but he couldn’t find the touch on it, sending kick-offs out on the full twice and watching several attacking kicks trickle dead.

His night was summed up when he went for a 40/20 from deep inside his own half. Katoa hooked it back across his body into acres of space and seemed to have hit it beautifully only for the kick to take a cruel bounce and trickle touch in-goal by a metre.

Saying rugby league is a game of inches is a good way to make people roll their eyes because it’s such a well-worn cliché but it’s only so well-worn because it’s true.

The halves were not alone in blemishes. Lolohea put in a sharp kick for Keaon Koloamatangi that would have cut the lead to eight points with 15 to go, but Koloamatangi muffed the put-down.

If the try was scored, the rowdy crowd could have been enough to maybe get Tonga home because the roar that sounded out when it was first awarded made such a result feel almost inevitable. 

But “if” and “maybe” and “could” aren’t enough against the Kangaroos, and Tonga is capable of too much to rely on luck alone anymore.

As hardy as they were, they can do more than just hold the gloves up, as Woolf indicated after the match. This is a team with high standards, a valiant fight is not enough anymore and that’s a good thing, because that means we have come to expect more.

The promise is still there, for Tonga and Australia and Test football itself. The ceiling is still so high you must crane your neck to see it.

The Kangaroos will definitely get there, because they always do. Tonga might get there, because they have a chance at it, and if the games get better they’ll also get bigger and international rugby league will at last make the most of what it has.

Not every Test has to be a referendum on the future or potential of rugby league but after matches like this it’s hard to think about anything but what may yet come.