Quote ="chubbs1981"as a born and bred southerner brought up on the 15 man code i have to disagree with your final sentence.
have you seen RU recently? scrums are not fed properly rucks are not contested (the only difference between the PTB and the union ruck is the pile of bodies on the floor. the line has been pushed back 5m from the back foot at the scrum(how long before the defensive line is too?. i mean the differences between the two codes are disappearing not increasing.
15-20 years to develop an SL side? in my view in 50 years i can see the games merging in a AFL/NFL style way from the 1960's. two similar games gradually blended into 1 and finally having a new rule set drafted out into a game which will in all eventuality look very much like RL rather than RU.'"
No mate, I haven't seen the Union games but I know they can't score a try to save their lives!! However, that doesn't seem to affect the media coverage, which is absolutely huge. If they get so much when the game (even in their view) is poor, what would happen if it was actually exciting?
And even if the game in 50 years time had 13 men and no lineouts etc, do you think Joe Bloggs would know about it or care that it looked like RL? would they even know? I doubt it.
