As a contest yes the tension made it a reasonable watch....as flipper say's England kept it a game in the second half though.

The skills on show were pretty poor for a major international (and I'm not an out an out Union knocker - I played it at school and for a year or so after, so understand some of the subtleties of the game).

I also think that in unions quest to be "entertaining" is losing some of it's character - the amount of times that a player is tackled and then only two or three players join the ruck while everyone else stands back and pauses waiting for the game to commence is ridiculous...if they want to be League then go the whole hog bring in a play the ball. The problem at the moment is they lack the speed, impact and dynacism of League but have this artificial breaking up of the game. I think this is a southern hemmer-sphere thing and maybe it works better there where they have more skillful attacking talents and play at a higher pace but in tonight's game it just seemed well awkward and a bit artificial.

Only caught about 15 minutes of it. The bit I saw was reminiscent of a day when 3 of us got the Landrover stuck in a bog up in Kielder: spells of vigorous grunting and shoving interspersed by bouts of head scratching and shouting at each other.

The summary on BBC Breakfast just now told us how Chris Ashton had underlined his world class by catching a ball and running the remaining few yards to the try line.

I suppose by Yawnion's standards, he is.

Thought it was an entertaining game last night. Welsh dug there own hole a few times with gaps in their defence etc and silly penalties given away (plus leaving Ryan Jones on the bench,bonkers)

Have to say though, I wish BBC would get rid of Brian Moore, his English bias is ridiculas, "No, thats not a forward pass, look at his hands" , Yes Brian, thats why the ball was in front of him....

How many forward passes ?
and feeding at the scrums....
and as said above have ya seen a slower pass of the rugby ball...?
wished ashton had dropped that ball for the first try..
and it shunt be happy it should be hopeless..
and the welsh commentry on the red button was excellent...

quick question as I have seen a lot of League folk moaning about Union


why bother watching if you know it's going to bore & anger you?

Don't know which posts you're referring to. Mine was an honest opinion about what little of the game I saw.

if the above statement by lorry L was a dig at me its misguided..
i wasn't bored or angry...
just noticed that what goes on in league happens in union too
and unlike league union has a genuine international stage
i actually enjoyed some of it...

Well one things for certain, there won't be queues from Jct 18 on the M4 trying to get to the Millenium Stadium next week

Exactly.

Well said Loz. I thought last nights game was a good one, glad we beat them and glad we got off to a good start. 3 games at home now!

I like him. I didn't even know who it were at the time so I googled him on my phone and I kinda recognise him a little. He's got one of those voices that don't match his face though I think, like all football commentators. Apart from Barry Davies. I love him.

His autobiog is a good read (the old one), i noticed he has something out now too, big league fan too, has pics in his book with Chris Anderson when he was at Halifax.

Had some very tough times in his youth (despite obviously loving adoptive parents), bright, driven bloke who played a huge part of dragging England out of the dark ages on and off the pitch. Pigeon holed as the shop steward and a firebrand in some of the players battles with the RFU but was rightly fighting for parity for him and his colleague compared to what was happening officially or unofficially in the other countries.

Used to love his routine winding up of the french in his playing days - week before england france game his interviews would ensure the french were ready to explode and lose their control come kick off time, worked a treat for years. His account of the 91 wc qarter final in paris v the french is superb, talking about he and Pete Winterbottom were feeling.

He's the poor man's Yawnion answer to Steveo ....

"Yes, I know ... A mere 'solicitor' ... How dare he speak to us in those terms. He should be at least a Baronette before he speaks to an RFU committee like that"

the RFU didn't like the players having an opinion back then, i think it's in his book that he makes reference to the committee men coming down to the changing rooms to gee up the team and impart their wisdom before the match...Will Carling called it right.

Me??

Already said I watched the game as I was curious and had nowt better to do.

As a contest it entertained me but not in terms of the skills - I'm glad I watched it but shan't bother with any more of the 6 nations.

Only thing that angers me is the unfair difference in how the press treat Union and League (exemplified by the hyping of Chris Ashton). And before anyone says about how much more of an international game they have don't forget that most broadsheets dedicate 2-4 pages per week on the Union club competition yet attendences and TV audiences are no better than League (which is lucky to get half a page on grand final weekend).

I would suggest alot less forward passes than you would see in the average league game.
I think what makes Ashton world class is the fact he played league and full back. Most of his trys are from following the ball waiting for offload.

I actually enjoyed the game.

think we spend too much time worrying about it and comparing. It's a different game. League is a northern game and union is more based in the south where all the papers are based.

Oh and internationally union achive much more than we do.

Yep. The day after the 2nd Leeds v Wigan playoff game last year in the Telegraph (IIRC) there was 2 pages dedicated to a couple of Union games (just regular league games) none of which were on TV and which their combined attendances added up to just less than 9,000. The Leeds v Wigan playoff with an attendance of over 13,500 and a significant TV viewing got a small column on the right hand side of a page which didn't even stretch half way down the page.
There is no justification for that kind of bias which is prevalent amongst the media.

Not sure if that still stacks up anymore, I'm sorry to say.

At its full time professional level RU has a much broader national spread than RL, it has a fully competitive European tournament and twice yearly international rounds of games.

It attracts greater media attention because it has all the bases covered, not because there is any sort of bias - thats the sort of thinking that makes RL so insular and will condemn it ever to be second best in the media's eyes.

You're right .... it does now.

It is finally justifying the bias that has always been ingrained regardless of what it had to offer.

Yet the single game rugby league game received 50% more support through attendance than the 2 Union games, plus the TV audience. If Union has such a broad national appeal then why don't more people attend?

If the papers and media want to report 2/3/4 times as much coverage for England Rugby Union than England Rugby League then fair enough, the attendances warrant that. Yet the papers and media aren't doing that, they're reporting 2/3/4 times as much coverage for domestic rugby union games which (in this instance) was obviously 3 or 4 times less popular than it's rugby league counterpart.