Thats a good one word description. Too many technicalties, not enough rugby.

I think if Johnson can keep the England team playing the same kind of attacking structure and intent as shown over the last couple of weeks they will be well worth watching especially with the likes of Foden ,Cueto ,Youngs and Flood who all enjoy and thrive on open attacking Rugby selected.

Until we get injuries to Flood & then we have to go back to Johnny Wilkinson!!

Enjoyed most of this afternoon watching 2 Union games on ESPN HD.

Leeds Carnegie are on next Sunday, losing away to Harlequins

I will always remember the Wigan versus Bath challenge matches.

There is undoubtedly a skill involved in Rugby Union forward play but as a spectacle give me RL, Superleague and especially NRL anytime.

That said I can see the growing danger to our game's future existence if RU continues to improve in its apparent growing ability to entertain with exciting running rugby. Still... We are not in the depths of Winter yet with all the accompanying mud inducing boring kick fests.

Summer rugby anyone ?

Although most posters don't seem to be aware, there's a union thread on here. Feel free to join us some time viewtopic.php?f=30&t=437277&start=840

Although most posters don't seem to be aware, there's a union thread on here. Feel free to join us some time viewtopic.php?f=30&t=437277&start=840

Nail on head. Two different sports, like comparing tennis with badminton.

Super 14 is dire and has been struggling in recent years. The rules (ELV's)they tested out to "make the game more entertaining" resulted in aimless kicking duels where the ball stayed in play but was just punted from one FB/Winger to the other ad nauseum.
Last year England couldn't play with the ball for more than 2 phases without kicking it (badly). This year they have oviously been told they'll be dropped permenantly (off a cliff) if they kick ball away for no good reason and hey presto, something that's effective and good to watch.
Scrummageing in Union is what it is - a contest - and an important one at that. RL scrums, when they were a contest, were probably the worst sporting spectacle I've ever seen.

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The IRB introduced new refereeing interpretations to encourage more attacking play. Super 14 introduced the new style in February 2010 for the Super 14, the Northern hemisphere did it in September 2010

Basically, Australia and NZ RUs (and to some extent, the PI Unions) have always wanted to play and reward more expansive, ball in hand Rugby, much closer to RL. The NH powers resisted the trend for some time, favouring 10 man, forward dominated, percentages Rugby. The All Blacks are most balanced, the Australian Wallabies have played some exciting games this year (incidentally 9 current Wallabies have an RL background or experience), but lack power in the scrum, and the forwards are struggling in the collisions.

Thing that kills the game for me, certainly in the premiership, is giving 3 points for a penalty kick.

Teams might be trailing by 10 points and finally get into an opponents 20m zone, only to then take a pop at goal instead of kicking for the corner and pushing for a try. Really hate that lack of ambition - well actually, it makes sense because you get 3 points and get the ball back - hence my problem with the scoring.

Drop it to 2 points, make tries more valuable. Then i'd be interested.

Seen Carnegie play at home to Sale this season which ended 6-3. Their game against Exeter this weekend ended 15-9. No tries in each. Utterly garbage. And it's honestly not just because of how bad Carnegie are.....

I'd agree with that. To make matters worse, coaches have encouaged wrestling and three man tackles to try to counteract these effects which reduces many games to the tedious lows historically associated with union, albeit that the handling skills are still generally superior. I much, much preferred our game when it used to be an impact sport.

I'd agree with you there. I can sort of see the reasoning for increasing penalties to 3 points in that they wanted to try and create a higher consequence for defending teams who continually gave away penalties on their own line, however all they've done is, as you say, make the attacking team go for the 3 points instead of pushing for the try.
Drop the penalty down to 2 points. Keep the try at 5 to make it more valuable and instead of penalising defending teams get the yellow card out more often and sin bin them if they continually offend on their own line. If an attacking team still goes for a penalty worth 2 points instead of attempting for a possible 7 against 13 or 14 men then their coach needs a good kicking.

Also put the drop goal down to 1 point instead of 3, no need for it to be at 3 and is far too much of a reward for not much.


Yep, there's still plenty of utter rubbish on show in Union and still to my amazement plenty of full time players who cant pass a ball properly. It does my head in.

they are contests, and there are specialist skills at work, but any restart that more often than not, causes another breakdown is of limited merit to me in terms of spectacle.

I'm no authority but don't they also receive a bonus competition point for losing a game by 7 points or less?

Probably an unintended consequence but evidence that administrators can be a bit dim at times.

It depends who is watching. I personaly love to see 8 Australians all being shunted backwards, upwards or into the ground by an English/Welsh/Irish front row. Also, in Union if scrummageing wasn't a contest (like the Australians would love), then you could have two more back row forwards on the pitch instead of props (hooker are already like back row forwards) and there would be even less space. But I realise that in a World where you have to compete for an audience that it might not appeal to a majority of viewers.

I remember watching a game between Bath and Newcastle a few years ago that was just a war of attrition up front, having played I appreciated it, but thought it was nothing in terms of spectacle to someone who was dipping into it and thinking 'is this a game i want to watch'

Forward domination is one thing, and i too love seeing the aussie front 5 vanish up their own backsides, but collapsed scrum, wheeled scrum, slipped bindings, penalty, kick for touch, line out, knock on, start it all again is limited in its appeal to me.

Absolutely essential. Union can be killed by offside and illeagal play at the ruck. In the old days you could shoe the hell out of players trying to kill the ball on the deck and you could thump them as well if they persistantly infringe. Obviously that's all frowned upon now, so if you don't penalise with points scoring chances it can simply kill the game.
The Fiji - Wales game was mentioned earlier in the thread as being dire. It was. A part of that was because the Fijians spent most of the game infringeing at the ruck. Whenever it looked like Wales might get good ball they went on the deck and killed it or came in offside or from the side of the ruck. Not major, but so difficult to play against. If that wasn't penalised heavily then everybody would do it and the game would grind to a halt.

I remember reading an article back in the 80's, I think around the time when they increased the points for a try, and the guy writing it postulated that to give real incentive to score tries the try would have to be worth 20 points. In those days he was probably right.

It's like anything, there are good examples and bad examples. In soemthing that technical it's easy to infringe and most refs don't have a clue what they are looking at (which I find extraordinary).

Re: 2 points for a penalty.

As a non-union watcher, isn't the point of a penalty supposed to be to give reward to a team who would have been in good position to score a try but for foul play?

When the rules were framed, a penalty would only have been convertible within try-scoring range (20-40 yards), and even then with no guarantees. With the advent of professionalism, greater training techniques and strength, different rugby balls etc. *any* Union kicker (as opposed to the occasional freak) has a chance of kicking a penalty from in his own half, and would *expect* to convert from 40-50 yards. So the punishment no longer fits the crime, and they really should reduce the penalty to two points to avoid games where the scores simply move on in multiples of three, because I don't think it's going to be too long before you get kickers who can routinely knock them over from 60+ yards.

At the risk of sounding like Brian Moore, the overwhelming majority of union referees at all levels are guessing when it comes to who is responsible for a collapsed scrum. Bit like a lot of RL referees, they haven't played the game at a high enough level to understand the intricacies of what's going on around them.

Didn't the ELV's first come in in 2008? Super 14 (soon to be 15) was better when it still resembled union. For me, and I understand to some degree why, the Super 14 and to a lesser degree Southern Hemisphere rugby union has moved towards rugby league.
I think the competition would be much better and interesting if we got some different winners; 15 seasons, 4 different champions.

Super Rugby or Super League?

Read the thread title.

I have thanks - not sure how Super Rugby can be somehow less vibrant and exciting because only four teams have won it in fifteen years though. How many teams have won Super League, or English football's Premier League, or La Liga, over the same period?

Who wins in the end doesn't dilute the quality of entertainment a competition provides IMO.

I think that if more than say four or five teams looked like possible champions each year it would add more to the competition. As it is I'd be surprised if either the Bulls or Crusaders didn't lift the trophy again next season.
La Lliga has become boring and predictable and is heading the same way as the Scottish League (look Barça and Madrid's results at the weekend).