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Well I've refrained from commenting on this thread so far. Having now watched a few games in the RUWC. Just so boring. There must be 10 mins at absolute best in which rugby is actually played in a game. The rest is all kicking and dead ball time. I only wanted to watch the rugby tonight because of the burgess factor. He's hardly touched the ball. Made maybe 1 tackle and is now off.

Lancaster dropped a clanger taking Youngs off for Wrigglesworth.

Ahahaha! But in fairness Should have left Sam on.

So the great plan of playing England's last group game at the Manchester City's stadium on the same day as the SL GF at Old Trafford is now possibly a dead rubber if they lose to Australia next week?

In fairness they lost to a class Wales side...should be ok next week.

Seriously? They were shocking. Not to mention they lost half their back line in one incident! England are terrible.

No

It's a sad state of affairs isn't it? How can a sport this good be lagging behind women's cricket in terms of sponsorship?

Maybe my thoughts on expanding in Scandinavia is about a decade too early. But I'd agree on making Wales and France competitive. I believe there are 40000 active players in RL in France (a 10k rise since 2012). The sport is in the up there. When Hull KR went and played Catalans in Toulouse the other year there were 15000 spectators there. That's impressive. When you think that I was fairly impressed with Wigan-Catalans getting 8000 at Millwall a few weeks back. Catalans-Warrington got 18000 in Barcelona in 2009 too. Okay that's not in France but maybe there's something to be built on there as well but we've never revisited the idea.

There is certainly something there to be built on in France though. It just needs to be run properly.

I think the biggest thing for the international game to grow is for Australia to really get behind it with a big sponsor(s) on board though. As you say, we just don't have he money up North. We need the Aussies!

But as we've both said, we can still help ourselves up here in the Northern Hemisphere by getting a proper calendar and cycle together. I'm from Manchester a random rugby league fan in an area where there are about eight local amateur rugby union clubs. Not many of my mates like rugby league. But I've taken a few of them to about four Grand Finals and a Magic Weekend in the city and they've all enjoyed it. If we could set our calendar to an international game a year as well and we knew that every year we would be off to "xxxxxx?" to watch England v France in June, lien you say, then there's another thing in there that people can pin-point and build from (doesn't have to be in Manchester, I just used that as my example). Casual fans, people who don't particularly follow one club or the sport all year round may still get themselves off to see that game once a year as well as the usual RL community. Have it at Bolton's ground every year or something.

52 points and 2 tries?
is that right?

what a bloody god awful sport it is!

if only RL had RUs money and influence eh

That's how the game usually pans out. You do get the occasional match where a fair amount of rugby is played. South Africa/Samoa wasn't bad at all, and the ABs (who believe in keeping the ball alive in the hands, and avoiding excessive kicking) are always worth a watch.

Ford was an unknown quantity? So you are saying Wales management team didn't know anything about him

Wales sent plenty of big fellas down his channel in February and he did very well. As for saying Farrells abilities are best suited against Wales, remind me how each got on respectively against Wales this year? And i mentioned BOD because you said pundits were slating Burgess because they were 'anti-league', do you think BOD is anti-league? No, so you were talking rubbish.

on a forum i use someone said "why can't the international game be as exciting as the club game, that Huddersfield-leeds game was brilliant but the England-Wales was boring!"

i guess it's all about education?

I'm getting fed up with work colleagues and the like saying to me, you like rugby, don't you, moto? You must be really looking forward to the World Cup!

I don't see why so many posts in this thread are about Union.

That's what happens when you let one previously banned user create multiple new accounts for the sole purpose of trolling, you end up with multiple threads derailed over to the same topic. In this case RU.

It's also why this forum is dying faster than Leigh's Super League dream.

90k again at Wembley for another group stage miss match in Ireland v Romania.as much as it pains me,you have to tip your hat to the RFU and Union as a whole, that is a great effort.

It's funny though, I don't see what that's got to do with our international game.

Post 1 in this thread:


The OP wanted to belittle Union because in their opinion, the 'heritage' blight that makes International Rugby League a laughing stock is replicated in Rugby Union. It isn't....the OP posted "roughly assembled' statistics that were then blown out of the water with accurate ones, including the number of heritage players by % at the last RLWC compared to this union one.....but it is a deeper issue than that.

we shouldn't concern ourselves with the RWC 2015......It has little if anything to do with us, but yet this forum has seen this thread and the Sam Burgess one highlight the insane insecurity that is rife amongst certain RL fans. Who cares that Ireland v Romania gets a bigger crowd than the RLWC 2013 semi-final double header....it's a different sport FFS! Who cares if the Japan side that defeated South Africa had a whole 6 players born outside Japan in their match day 23...we have Ireland RL with not one Irishman...nada, nil, zilch......so we blame Union to make ourselves feel better. It's pathetic.

^^^^^ changing man

I am of course a rugby League fan.There are 2 codes of rugby to watch,yet I feel i watch the code which provides the better product,by far.I have felt that for the near 30 years i have watched the game.In that 30 years i have watched RU grow and grow on the international stage whilst the game i follow has stood still, gone backwards even on the international scene, and is still pretty much at square one compared to Union and not having any real hope for serious improvement on the short term at least. These are the facts and i guess most people on here would admit as much.It also has to be said we on here are the fans, we back the game, we are the bums on seats and aren't the problem.The problem lies with those who run the game.

Am i jealous of RU? Yes because i feel they get the exposure and backing we should get as a sport.It makes mad to see the RFU getting wembley full for a mickey mouse game like Ireland against Romania when we will be lucky to get close to a sell out in the first test in a stadium half the size when the fare on offer is 10 times what we got today. Yet what can I do about it apart from go myself? nothing!

That is why genuine league fans are peeved off.We are and have been let down as a game from the top for many years. totally undersold, we all know it and it is being rubbed in our faces right now.

Bill. Exactly who is rubbing it in our faces? Should ITV (an independent television network with responsibilities to shareholders) not show as much as they can? Should the papers ignore 89,000 at Wembley and instead discuss 11k at St Helens or Hull?

I am a massive fan of bagging the RFL at every opportunity, because I believe they are incapable of running anything other than their own careers. I appreciate that they take the easy option every time and dress it up as "cutting edge" purely to make themselves look good. Sally Bolton had more talent in one stiletto heel than the entire RFL board which is why they let her go......she was making Nigel look very ordinary.

What pee's me off is the constant need to slag Union off........it's not the RFU's fault we've wasted 7 weeks watching Wigan nick a home tie of St Helens but seen nothing else change in the top 4......it's not Bill Beaumont's fault that Wakefield have 800k more to spend on players than Bradford and it's not St Johnny of Wilkos fault that the 19th best team in the country might win a trophy at the weekend if they can beat the 17th best.......that's the RFL!

And all this over the last 7 weeks and 86 games so far has come at the expense of the existing fans......we've all paid more money for more games and some treat it like a miracle.

Sooner the likes of lenagan and hetherington and even that at Salford start talking about breaking away the better.....because 22 teams in the top 24 from north of Coventry isn't a national sport.....it's a northern hobby and it gets treated as such by the national press!

As far as the International game goes.....you can't have much of an international game that basically consists of 3 teams (England, NZ, Aussies)

Imagine the Irish, Welsh, Scottish and French national RU sides being as weak as their RL counterparts. Then imagine them trying to host a 6 Nations every year when England win every single game by 50 points. It wouldn't have become the event it was.

Look at those countries and the club sides they produce like Leinster, Cardiff, Toulouse etc. Which enables them to have a European competition.......RL has just one decent French team that can compete.

If RU just had England/Nz/Aus as top teams like RL has then it'd struggle to have a quality International calendar. RL needs more quality International sides for it to be taken more seriously and for those countries to build quality international sides they need quality club sides.

has someone hacked your account.......if I'd posted that I'd have been banned!



England v France every year on bastille day......and yes, they may get owned a few times but they will get better. Play it in Paris too.......

England vs France was tried wasn't it and it got shot down by RL fans.

We even tried a tri nations in 2012 of England vs Wales vs France when the Southern Hemisphere wasn't interested and people hated it and said it was a joke competition.

Because it was a joke competition.

England vs France as a test match every year in France should happen though. There is no need for this game to be staged in England.