I fill in online surveys to make a few extra quid a month and came across an interesting sports survey, on it was about the idea of how the public would take to a new hybrid code of rugby to consist of both ex RU & RL players in a brand new league.

To reach the stage where whoevers idea this is decides to involve market research, someone with some money is trying to get the ball rolling somehow as regards to a serious "breakaway" from both codes. The survey was asking questions such as will clubs survive in the economic climate at lower levels (ie. Non-Superleague/Non RU Premiership clubs), and would fans accept the idea as such, & does a white collar/blue collar code clash still exist at lower levels amongst other questions.

I think this could be a fantastic idea as Lewis and Wood are destroying our sport outside SL, and I suppose its the same for RU clubs if you aren't in the Premiership.

Feel free to cut & paste this to your various fans forums for their views & opinions on this.

I'm not too sure about this if I'm honest.

Sounds like an interesting idea and I'd love to find out how it would be played and with what rules but I wouldn't like them to destroy our sport in the making

Didnt they try this in Aus recently?

merge with union


LOL

I can understand the business case for this and if you were a dispassionate executive with no allegiances to either code and no insight into the history of the code war then it might look feasible.

A hybrid game that had fixtures such as Saracens v Rhinos, Wigan v Northampton, Sts v Bath, Leicester v Hull played in modern stadia and in front of crowds of 15,000 to 20,000 looks awesome on paper but IMO wouldn't work.

Ridiculously we would end up with three codes of rugby, League, Union & a hybrid of the two, there would be problems internationally with the NRL not gaining anything from the merger and probably opting to stand alone. There would be a number of traditional English League clubs rushing to fill the void left by the departure of Wigan, Bradford etc and before long we would see the birth of a new Wigan, Bradford and so on.

The cumulative effect would be a watering down of the hybrid game and it would eventually stall and fail, the question is what state would both League and Union be left in afterwards.

Yes this thread has been done before.

The reason for the idea in Australia was that RL crowds are down .. particularly in Sydney.

The problem you've got is that it would just end up being Rugby Union.

League is not big enough to have a say in what goes on, the union purists would object to the league influence, and the league lot would desert the new game because they find union slow and boring.

Within 10 years, we'd have THREE forms of rugby. Union, League and the hybrid.

I take the view that RL should now try to distance itself from RU. RU have cleverly engineered a monopoly on the use of the word Rugby. Well, if they want it, let them have it - we can call ourselves League, or even RFL. We already refer to the NFL, NBA, AFL etc, so why not RFL?

Then, and only then, will people 'get' that RL is a completely different sport to its union counterpart - too different to be merged into it, for sure - and only then will it be taken seriously as a sport in its own right, and not just a northern way of playing rugby.

Just take a look at the reaction when you mention the 'M' word in the same sentence as Wakey and Cas .
That should give you an idea of what reaction you will get . If teams are not prepared to merge with a neighbour that plays the same sport , then I very much doubt they would entertain the idea of a merge with another team AND a change of the sport that their team plays .

This BS has been suggested 1000s of times over the last 100 years. Havent you got anything better to talk about?

I agree with you regarding union taking over and we would end up with three codes of rugby,no thanks.

As for our game dropping the name rugby why should we.

As far as I am concerned rugby is RL,stuff union let them think they have claimed the name rugby,couldn't care less.

In fairness Union has been around longer than league

stop this hybrid talk please!

Rugby League fans dont want it.

No it has not. They were both the same game, started at Rugby school. It was the northern clubs that broke away (1895) & the clubs carried on with the same rules they just evolved. Union & League are nothing like they were at the time of the split but our history is shared before the split even if the Union try to deny it.

Phipps says that the reason that a unification game was tried in Australia is that RL crowds are down. In fact NRL crowds were the highest ever last year if you include both the regular season and the finals. See here.
[urlhttp://stats.rleague.com/rl/crowds/summary.html[/url
For RU neither super 15 nor club rugby publish regular attendance figures but the crowds in both competitions were certainly well down a year ago. Final figures are not yet available for either code for this year.

yep spot on.

excellent post

Only an idiot would think that the 2 codes didn't originate from the same game, Rugby Football. Where has the IRB denied the history of the two games being shared? Is it available in a published and accredited link, or is it an opinion?

As for Unification...stupid idea.

League has it's strengths at club level, Union at International.....as has been seen at Harlequins.....your average Union fan has no interest in League and the same goes for the other way around. Same at Leeds.

As a Union convert, I can honestly say that they are two totally different sports with different sets of skills required.

at the risk of being burnt at the stake.....this website is actually a pretty good read
[urlhttp://www.rugbyfootballhistory.com/originsofrugby.htm[/url
interesting indeed...
[urlhttp://www.rugbyfootballhistory.com/Schism.html[/url

The two codes stand on their own two feet. Hybrid would just create a third code.

Whats interesting is that kids play play a hybrid game. When my kids played in U7's (Union) it was 7's with 6 tags and a handover...........sound familiar. At U10's they still played 7's but introduced scrums but no lineouts.

I once read somewhere a quote about 'Union being great for even the unsporting big kids', to be honest my eldest is no great rugby player but he's 5' 8" only just 12 years old so he does OK in Union. Younger boy (see avatar) thinks he's Jonathan Thurston ala scrum cap and flashy boots, and too be honest he's pretty good.

IF IT WERE TRUE IT WOULD BE AN EXCELLENT POST... THE REALITY IS THAT THE GAME IS MUCH... MUCH OLDER (sorry didn't mean to shout) the game evolved from a series of rules played at different public schools across England... the common [imyth [/iis that our game was founded at Rugby school by William Webb Ellis 'pick up the ball and running with it'...


the reality is that all codes of football have the same root, and all games evolved over time... it just happens that 2 of the codes have taken a more recent diversion, and both claim the same name!

Errrmmm not quite.

From a marketing and business point of view, RU have it sewn up. As long as we use the word rugby (for a game that ISN'T anything like RU) then we will always be in RU's shadow. Rugby's fat, poor, uncouth, uneducated, Northern cousin; as fair as the public are concerned of course.

Therefore we need to distance and differentiate ourselves from RU, and that's not going to happen as long as people think that "rugby is rugby." The way to do it is to distance ourselves from the very word "rugby"

Maybe we could rename the sport 'Superleague' and bring in a funky new badge?





Or not

Silliness aside...

I wasnt on about renaming the sport, I was merely on about rebranding it. There's a difference.

The powers that be should refer to the sport as RFL. Like they do with the NFL, AFL, GAA, NBA etc...

A friend of mine is a Kiwi and his kids refer to League as NRL.

I don't agree.

And the examples you have named.. most people know them as American football, Aussie rules or Gaelic football anyway.

Our game is 'Rugby'. It's just not 'Rugby Union'

I don't think rebranding /renaming it makes a blind bit of difference personally.

That's OK. You're not exactly the brightest spark, though, are you?