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?

Clearly a lot brighter than some.

I thought back in the day that it was inevitable when the rahrahs chose the professional route we would end up with some sort of hybrid game. This was mainly due to the fact that union was such a boring spectacle that I didn't think they would attract enough spectators to make the game financially viable. However, their crowds are standing up fairly well but where there is a choice of watching either League or Union, as in our M62 corridor, then League wins hands down.

Personally I would like to see some sort of unification as I think our game has partly lost to its detriment the more technical aspects of the game such as contested scrums/play the balls, specialised hookers props etc and union is too reliant on gaining penalties rather than scoring trys.

No thanks. RL is the best product on any pitch, why would we want to make it inferior. There is more to sport than filling shiny stadiums and corporate boxes. I would rather watch local amatuer than some ised mix of union and league.

Union is abandonded as a sport and all the best players start playing League.

The slow little fat blokes with no necks and 6 foot 8 blokes all go back to not playing any sport at all.

Interesting read this! I would like to postulate something I consider to be the reason that the RU and the IRB would not be willing to merge back with RL in the immediate future and, again, it would be them that would reject a potential merger and not the other way around in principal.

The issue is about control and the people currently in charge in RU/IRB, at both some national levels and at an international level losing 'their' control of 'their' game.

Firstly, if they are really, really honest, they would have no choice but to change the rules and the game would look much more like League than Union because the game of RU would need to improve drastically, particularly at pro-club level throughout the world (maybe with exception of SA?). So, it would be the Union game that would change and quite frankly, the administrators (most of whom still go back before 1995!) of the game just don't want that to happen.

RU fear that the League clubs and the League Administrators would once again start to and ultimatley have the greater control and they would lose even more control of their game.

The clubs that would start to do well initially in newly merged Leagues, in England and Australia in particular, would be the old RL clubs. We would see the new merged national sides dominated by ex-League players, because the game would be more RL than RU, but RL club players are still generally fitter than RU players.

All this would resolves itself over time and produce a much stronger game but some very traditional and strong Union and League clubs who are not in bigger towns and city locations would not be in the new top flight and again, in England and Australia, more former League clubs would be in this top-flight and not the former RU clubs, just because of population demographics and amateur clubs (of both old codes) in these more populous areas.

What is interesting about this is that, as RU continues to grow geographically, then will they be forced to start and change the rules anyway? I think they will and in some ways I think this passion for expansion in RL is actually a waste of time, because in maybe another 20 years a reunited game looks very possible... but they will probably be playing a game that looks more like RL anyway!

It wont happen.

Despite RL crowds being down overall on previous years in the NRL there is still enough interest to sustain 2 different codes.

RL is as popular as it ever has been in the traditional areas in Superleague.

Rugby Union is still popular with those who like it.


There is no need for a hybrid code and it simply won't happen.