Last Saturday Doncaster RU hosted a Championship select XV versus Maori All Black team. It was an excellent well organised event, a good game held at a nice stadium with decent facilities. It drew a crowd of almost 5,000 in a town with virtually no RU history.
What sort of crowd would a similar RL event have drawn in the same town?

Comparing one-off events between the two codes is completely irrelevant.

Leeds Rhinos average 16 thousand fans while Leeds Carnegie average 16 hundred at the same ground. It means absolutely nothing.

Yes but Leeds is probably the capital city of RL at this time. Donny has no real RU heritage but they still had a good well attended event.

Donny has barely any RL heritage either mate, lets be honest.

(That is not a put down towards the fantastic job being done at Doncaster RLFC by the way!)

I agree. What i'm getting at is that i don't think the RFL would get an equivalent crowd for a similar event in the same town.

It feels sacrilegious to say it ( and I only do so because it aint never going to happen ) but when I watch the All-Blacks I can see the beginnings of a half-interesting sport.

One thing I often wonder is that if League had never existed, would Union have reduced itself to 13 players by now? It just feels like it would be so much more interesting with a bit more space - not to mention a) reduce the reward for sticking it up the forwards' jumpers, and b) reduce the reward for kicking the ball off the field, and c) sorting scrums out or scrapping them.

I've played a lot of League and a bit of Union ( League at a crap level, Union at 'higher' level - by its own pyramid that is ) and whenever I played Union it always felt like there was just no bl**dy room! There were bodies everywhere ( own team included ) and (as a winger) you rarely got the ball, and when you did, it was mostly to field a kick, where you were then chastised for trying to take a man on, risking 'isolation' instead of just drilling the ball into the stand.

Probably not, but we have to stop comparing Rugby League to Union. The money they have compared to us is like comparing a city banker to a paperboy.

That is not to say League will ever cease to exist completely though.

I’d agree, I think if League didn’t exist then Union would have moved a lot closer to what League is now

I also think that if there wasn’t the animosity toward Union, and it was looked on like NFL is, then we would possibly look towards bringing some things back from Union, like lineouts instead of scrums, and possibly the scoring system.

That was a sensible post until your last suggestion. Why would we want to reward 3 points for a DG 5 points for a try and 3 points for a pen? It would have the same drawbacks in RL as it already has in RU.

It would also keep games closer which is something even RL fans complain about (I know, I know, RL fans complain about everything possible) It would keep games closer and add more variety to the game, these would be good things, I appreciate we would probably see fewer tries, but it is possible we have a too many of them. I dont think anyone can say with absolute certainty that it would swing too far the other way but if it did, i think it would be a case of tinkering with it rather than a wholesale change.

I disagree fans in general complain about not keeping games closer. Most games of RL are close for most of the game. Most games one side or the other will eventually work its way into a dominant position but more often than not lopsided scores are much less lopsided than they appear on paper, a team running in 3 or 4 tries in the last 5 or 10 minutes is frequently no reflection on the whole game.

Keeping final results closer is a myth. I did a fairly thorough analysis last season between the NRL and the SL scores over one weekend and could find no real difference statistically in respect of close final scores. The fact that when 2 teams were drawing 16-16 with 15 minutes to go, but then one goes on to win 32-16 does not mean they are twice as good or that it was, for the speccies, a bad game.

If you increase the relative value of kicks then it is bleedin obvious that all you will achieve is far more kicks. Would that lead to closer final scores? It might even do, but if I want to watch a crowd of men standing around for 60 out of 80 minutes while a poseur performs arcane kicking rituals, I already have the option of attending RU alternatives. If this is what you want, start a sport called "Rugby Kickathon". The rules are that the respective kickers take shots at goal from assorted positions for 78 minutes, and then there are 2 minutes of open play. It would guarantee close games, but is not the way I want games to be "made closer".

As i said, i think you would see more kicks, but i dont think it would be a huge amount more, i dont think we be comparable to union levels. Why i think it would improve the spectacle is that we see too many games imo, that are won in a 10/15 minute period, were 2/3/4 tries pretty much ends the game as a competition, it would allow, during these periods, teams to keep the scoreline ticking over and keep in touch. The aim of course would be to make sure that this didnt encourage sides to win by good kicking at the expense of good running rugby. I dont think we have that balance right at the moment, teams are too often blown away and kicking (for points, and outside conversions) is actually relatively rare in our game. I'd agree though, we wouldnt want the game to be primarily kicking based/

Exactly.....as I have said elsewhere, it does RL no favours to compare the 2 codes.

How, though?

If team B can't get a touch of the ball, which is why Team A keeps scoring, how would points allocation make any difference?

They will get a touch of the ball though, probably not get in to a position to score a try, but more like, in a position to score a penalty or drop goal .

God save us from the embarassment ( clearly not felt by Union fans ) of one team scoring two tries to none but losing to their opponents who kick five penalties.

Jamie Fosters Value would go through the roof, if kicking became more valuable.

Get a penalty on half way, he's going to get told to kick it every time. Any penalty within 50m's of the try line would be a kick. With a penalty being worth more than 50% of a try, what about the attraction of more niggling in the tackle. Losing the ball on purpose to try and secure a penalty.

Or conversely hands in at the PTB, and in and around the ruck has a much worse punishment so is eradicated from the game.

Or it would grant the "big" teams even more free points with the iffy calls they already get being magnified by penalties being worth more.

Yeah, if you did suffer from paranioa and a huge chip on your shoulder its a possibilty.

Much as we all pretend it doesn't happen , it does , just human nature

The RU scoring system is one of the worst aspects of their game.
IMO union should adopt Leagues scoring system to make their game more interesting.
With 3 points for a penalty, much of the attacking play is based around drawing penalties from the opposition and less effort is put into attempting to score try's and where did they get 3 points for a drop goal.
I'm sure that if league didnt have 4 pts for a try 2 for a conversion/ penalty etc, then Yawnion would possibly have used the same tarrifs.
The scoring system in League is far better than Union, leave it be.

So has the super league got a sponsor yet?

RFU rules have always awarded more points for goals than tries.

Excert from RFU History of scoring: 1886 (accepted):-"A match shall be decided by a majority of points, a goal shall equal three points, and a try one point. If the number of points be equal, or no goal kicked or try obtained, the match shall be drawn. Where a goal is kicked from a try the goal only is scored."
Later penalty kicks were introduced, allowing teams disadvantaged by illegal play to kick for goal and score points if successful."

Later in 1891 a goal other than a goal after a score (a drop kick in other words) was worth 4 points. The value of kicks for goals has almost always being thus until 1971 when they introduced a 4 point try as an 'experiment'!!!!

They are probably still experimenting........................