No it's ok if their mother sleeps win other guys providing they're England RU captains......a Muslim though, that's a different matter.

Was pleased for Sam that he was picked for his first start in a full Union international. Of course, to say he is head and shoulders as a rugby player above his posh/fat boy etc mates is an understatement showing my lack of vocabulary.

As we know, the only thing we can take from Union is how they do hype and marketing. But the game itself? Don't say I didn't,t warn you in the OP.

Talking of the hype, and even though Sam was barely warmed up, he would have been quietly pleased how he smashed that Roberts (twice) and North in the three tackles he was called upon to do on them.

Then they take Sam off when winning with 20 mins to go. The defence then opens up like the Red Sea and they bottle it and lose. You got to laugh & scratch your head as to who all these people are that take in the hype and turn up at these Union matches.

Speaking for myself, I'm hoping Sam comes home soon (whether it's here or Oz) so we can stop having to watch this stuff.

I agree, plus the fact that when the Welsh were losing players left right and centre, Lancaster decided to make IMO a raft of totally unnecessary changes instead of being ruthless

Anyone would think RU was a free flowing end to end game the way it's reported. Last night's game was pretty much decided by how many penalties were given away and how many of them were kicked. In fact pretty much every International RU game is decided this way. How many sports do you know where the outcome solely relies on penalties during actual game time?

I also watched the earlier Middle 8s game between Bradford and Halifax and saw more attacking flair in that one game than what will be on show for the whole of the RU world cup. If some of those Twickers hooray Henrys saw that many tries in a game it'd blow their minds. But then are the majority really that bothered? Or is it just about being seen at an event with a royal presence? ITV made sure there was plenty of opiate for the masses with their constant panning to the young royals.

After spending the afternoon in the company of Professor Tony Collins prior to watching both of yesterday's oval ball games, I have even more disdain for the supposedly 'superior' code.

The unfortunate part of all this is how good the coverage, sponsorship and income is.
I admit to being jealous of rugby union for that.

If I was running RL, rather than get upset about it, I'd copy as much of the coverage as possible.

The best thing Sam can do is get back to League asap. What a truly dreadful game that was last night.

It was classic northern hemisphere RU, both teams doing all they could to con the ref and try and gain a penalty, so they could take a pop at goal.

Although it will probably never happen, they should copy RL's scoring system with 4 pts for a try and 2 for a conv/pen and 1 for a dg, this may just reduce the inherent negativity within the game.

Was thinking the same thing. The RU points scoring system just doesn't really encourage open rugby. Why try to build a move for 5 points when you can con an easy penalty for 3?

Including the dwarfish presenter in sports casual?

Er, it's five points for a try in RU...

But as they've already found, giving more more points for tries doesn't encourage try-scoring. In fact, the more valuable you make tries, the more worthwhile it seems to conceded penalties to save them.

What makes me laugh is that they need a bonus point system to try to encourage teams to score tries, even when they're clearly on top.

Until 1971 union's scoring was three for a try, two for a conversion, three for a penalty kick and until 1948 it was FOUR for a drop goal
In 1992 it then changed to 5 points for a try, still really hasn't encouraged scoring tries for the negative/totally talent free sides like England.
I wasted enough time watching 8 minutes of NZ dross last week, I can't be d with watching shiote not to mention the refs deliberately ignoring certain infractions (knock ons are a fave with onion refs) whilst pulling up on minor petty incidents often giving yellow cards for them

They could do with keeping the try at 5 points and either increasing the conversion to 3 or leaving it at 2 but reducing the penalty to 2 and drop goal to 1.

A drop goal isn't supposed to be a method of accumulating lots of points. It's meant to be a way of splitting 2 evenly matched teams by nudging yourself slightly ahead.

The objective of any points system in either code of rugby should be to encourage attempts at try scoring.
Unfortunately, since England are so powerful in the Union world, those points systems won't change because England would have to totally change their style of play and what suits them best.

In Union, because there's no guarantee of possession, there has to be a significant punishment otherwise defending teams could just keep giving penalties away rather than let the attack through. But rather than encouraging attacking teams to take 3 points, Union should use the sin bin to discourage defending teams giving away penalties.

No-ones forcing you to watch it. Oh that's right, you are the bloke who hates Union so much you paid good money to subscribe to BT to watch it for several months (and probably still do)



Keep it going, only 17 more pages until you get to a century of bitterness and jealousy. It's so funny I've told some mates to have a read. Normally you have to pay for this kind of entertainment

Didn't realise you had any mates!?

keep going. 17 to go

Talking about the daft points system in RU as someone was - last night BBC kept posting "PENALTY" excitedly in Twitter everytime someone had a kick. So I replied "So William Webb-Ellis picked up the ball, put it on a plastic tee and kicked for goal did he?." A joke of a "sport."

The RU world cup is an amazing event and only something RL could dream of.

It so professional and well promoted.

The pubs were buzzing with it last night.

An unsurpassed marketing triumph. Talk about the Emperor's new clothes.....jeez

RWC 2015 seems to be a hot topic on a number of Rugby League forums. This would appear to be a strange phenomenon that is unique to League as I have scanned a number of Union and soccer forums looking for paranoid rants back when RLWC 2013 was on and can't find any.....

Why is it that RL fans of a certain ilk feel the need to deride Rugby Union in regards to the spectacle they are currently running across England and Wales? They are averaging 50,000+ per game, England got 8 million TV viewers at the weekend and from what little I have seen on TV, the fans seem to be enjoying themselves?

We all are of the opinion that Union is a slow and ponderous game and pales into insignificance when compared to League, but the REALITY IS that the general public, when faced with the opportunity to attend or tune into International Rugby Union will do so in far greater numbers than will do so for League. Rather than try to score points against the bigger and better run sport which is more popular with comments like "the Emperor's New Clothes"why not accept it for what it is....a tournament that is light years of anything we could ever hope to produce. It's slick, it's seamless and it has, regardless of your one eyed opinion, captured the attention of a fair chunk of the population.

It will hurt it a bit though if England end up going out at the group stage. Host nations success always adds massively to an event.

I don't know what would be funnier.....England going out or England having to qualify for RWC 2019 in Japan

Rugby League supporters would, I suggest give Union 10/10 for the amount of money it attracts, marketing, hype and professional organisation. Only say 2/10 for what actually takes place on the pitch which, despite the things we'd give 10/10 for, is still amateurish at best. I'd expect that Sam Burgess thinks the same.

Did you come to that conclusion from watching BT Sport?

You've got to admit he's right though. Off field RL could learn a lot from RU. On field RL would learn very little from RU.

In the mid 20th century, two soft drink giants were pitted head to head with their leading brands - Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
For years, sales of Coke had out stripped Pepsi no matter what PepsiCo tried in terms of sales and marketing.

Then, one day, someone at Pepsi stumbled across something very interesting, something that should have (logically) forever changed the fortunes of Pepsi sales and the ultimate result of an Coke vs Pepsi battle. It turns out that, in a blindfolded taste test, the vast majority of people picked Pepsi as the cola they preferred against Coke. Thus the Pepsi taste challenge was born.

In the early 90s, Virgin cola tried the same marketing ploy, convinced that quality of taste would be an overriding factor in what cola people chose to drink.

Now, when was the last time you chose pepsi over coke?

Essentially, us feeling vindicated in the fact that we have a more entertaining game, one that a completely unbiased newcomer would prefer to union, serves only to make us feel better. The end product is the tip of the iceberg, the other 90% Union has League licked.

IMO League has to make headway in breaking down barriers between the two codes (player like SB and SBW starring in the WC will surely help). The majority of species at these world cup games are not club supporting species like we have. Whilst they exist, club RU is only at a scale to RL. RU however have the [ioccasionals[/i, the hundreds of thousands of people, mostly affiliated to an amateur RU club, who will enjoy the odd day out to watch an International game, no matter the quality of the actually rugby.
Amateur RU clubs have 3, 4 even 5 teams. This is because you can go on playing RU and having fun into your 40s, 50s, you'll even find the odd 60 year old doing it. That simply cannot be replicated in RL because of the physicality and pace of it,in fact you'll find plenty of ex rugby league players playing RU.

These guys are all potential rugby league fans. We need to break down the barriers, the idea that its one code or the other, the idea that because you play one, you can't enjoy the other. The RU, from their position of strength will try and convince the public other wise, but that's what we have to fight against to engage the wider public.