England coach Wayne Bennett launched a passionate plea for more Test matches to be played in the United States after watching his side topple New Zealand in Denver.

Organisers were encouraged by a crowd of 19,320 at the Mile High Stadium for England’s 36-18 victory over the Kiwis and have an agreement in principle to repeat the mid-season international over the next two years in the run-up to the 2025 World Cup, which is due to be staged in North America.

However, both England and New Zealand had to overcome strong opposition from the Australian players’ union as well as the NRL and the bulk of its clubs to get Saturday’s game off the ground, and Bennett is anticipating another political struggle for 2019.

“It starts now,” Bennett said. “It just defies logic from my point of view that we can have Samoa play Tonga, Papua New Guinea play Fiji and the State of Origin game and we’re the ones that put ourselves out to come over here and play.

“We want to do that but they say we can’t play on the same weekend yet there’s players playing Origin today in Australia who will have to back up for their clubs on Thursday.

“With better scheduling, we don’t have have that. It just needs better cooperation. We need to get our head out of the sand so that we can come here and start to put an imprint in places like Denver.”

Bennett, a noted internationalist who came up with the idea of the Tri-Nations Series two decades ago, compares the current situation to the pioneers who struggled to get the Origin concept off the ground.

Saturday’s game was shown live on cable television across the United States, as well as being beamed back to Britain and New Zealand, and the Brisbane Broncos coach is hoping that will help win over the critics, though he has his doubts.

“People back home that run our game will find a negative in that,” he said.

“We’ve a great product, I don’t know why we’re embarrassed about it.

“I just hope so many people watched this game in America today that they look at their TV guides to see when the next rugby league is on so they can watch it again.

“The game needs to recognise the importance of it (international rugby league). If we don’t, we’re not going to have the product in 20 years.

“Sport is changing that quickly, kids are growing up with all the sports around the world and they want to be in that place.

“The clubs in the 80s didn’t want Origin but there were strong enough men to say that’s what we need and we need a lot of people to stand up for international rugby league now because this is the next horizon.”

England vice-captain Sam Burgess, one of the NRL-based players who went out on a limb to campaign for the Denver Test, says they are prepared to carry on the fight.

“We’ll continue with the same stance,” said the South Sydney forward. “We’ve seen how valuable it is and I think the Kiwis got a bit out of it as well.

“I think it was worthwhile and we need to give it a few more years to pick up a bit more momentum.

“It’s been a fantastic week and we saw a good game of football, so I think overall a success.”

Despite his side’s defeat, new Kiwis coach Michael Maguire believes the ground-breaking Test was a success.

“It definitely has a future,” he said. “One thing the Americans do is get behind their sport and, if we can get rugby league into the American market it’s going to be huge.

“They like contact, they like the defensive side of the game and I think it would grow.”