What gets on my nerves is when you can see the team with possesion might have 5 on 3 on one side of the pitch with loads of space, just pass it out and make a break!... but no. Because they cant risk being tackled without anyone near them to back them up when tackled... they just give it on short pass inside and have another ruck and continually do that until a penalty is given.

Talking of world cups, the USA are about to qualify for the 2013 RLWC. They'll be in group D with Wales and the Cook Islands unless Jamaica can turn around a 30-4 deficit in ten minutes.

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USA qualify for the Rugby League World Cup 2013 with a 40-4 win over Jamaica. They'll face Wales, the Cook Islands and Scotland in two years time.

Rugby union, like football appeals to the masses because there are massive gaps in the flow of the games where you can eat prawn butties, drink beer and chat to your mates. Most Union or Football matches have so little happen in them that you need to have these other distractions to fill in the time. Most Union "fans" will have never been to watch a "club" game, even if they play for a local club, but may have attended an international. After a game of RL, where do you start. I will confess to having watched a little of the world cup thingy, and my conclusion is just as it has been for as long as i remember.


Why the hell do people watch that garbage!!!... That goes for modern football too, since it was made a no contact sport....

Like others on here I have not watched a single minute of it. I think it has been going on for about four weeks and I honestly have not spoken to a single person who has either watched it or had the least bit of interest in it. Just can't understand why the "Dark Side" gets all the hype

The one thing League could learn from Union is the opportunity to compete for the ball more. In union there are loads of opportunities to win back possession from the other side, many of which can lead to potentially great attacking opportunities. In League the chances to compete for the ball are minimal and means that momentum has become a major part of the modern game rather than a more natural ebb and flow.

Cycles can go on for five minutes or even longer in union and the ball can go unseen for minutes. One on one ball steal and the turnover every six tackles will do for me.

Watched it at the gym this morning. Should've watched something else, nearly got off the cardio machines just to get away!

You are right in some of the things you say, but wrong about others. I wouldn't say RU is "middle class" (whatever that means in 2011), just go to Gloucester, Bristol or Northampton to see that, but I would say it has the widespread appeal that you talk about.

In the same way that many people will be "interested" in Wimbledon but never watch another tennis match in their life, many people who would never dream of watching a game of rugby, would happily go to the pub and make an occasion out of an international.

It's not the sport for knowledgeable supporters (I have been at Twickenham and even with my limited knowledge, have known about 10X as much as the average "fan"icon_wink.gif, but it does attract support and who are we to question what those supporters get out of it?

RL is, imo the greatest game on the planet, but take away the actual product on the pitch and you are left with a provincial, mainly Northern minority sport that 99% of the country would compare with Darts (or possibly slightly less important).

If we could somehow translate the product to proper marketing, then we could have a global game on our hands.

Sadly as long as the communists in Red Hall, and more than a few "whippet and clog wearers" on here have their way, it will remain a minority Northern sport, who hangs onto it's "working class" roots at the expense of expansion.

People say this but think about the days when league was full of union players, Offiah, Botica, Tuigimala,Scott Quinnell, Davies, Gibbs, Bateman, Devereux, Craig Innes, Michael O'Connor, Ricky Stuart, all of them union men. League was a more exciting game IMO back then and these were more exciting players than todays admittedly very fit athletes. Today I feel league has become a war of attrition, the whole business about winning the collision, getting a fast playtheball or slowing the opposition's playtheball is crucial to success, it's just league's version of 'dominating the ruck'.

League fans just slag off union because they think they have to and have chips on their shoulders but they should remember the great history of our game has been based on bringing through players from union. The total lack of respect being shown by some fans towards Gareth Thomas is a disgrace in my book - one of the greatest rugby players of his generation and a better winger over the last 10 years than any winger league has produced (in this hemisphere) except possibly Carney at his peak.

True about the union imports. If we're being honest, most of the threequarters from Australia, NZ, France, Wales and England would star in RL. As for the games themselves, well my 3-year old loves running around the lounge whilst 'football' (RL) is on TV (with a football and pretending to be tackled for the whole game), but walks away when the union is on.

As you rightly say, marketing is the key.... And thats where the numpties at Red Hall register a massive "Fail".

League fans just slag off union because they think they have to and have chips on their shoulders but they should remember the great history of our game has been based on bringing through players from union. The total lack of respect being shown by some fans towards Gareth Thomas is a disgrace in my book - one of the greatest rugby players of his generation and a better winger over the last 10 years than any winger league has produced (in this hemisphere) except possibly Carney at his peak.'"

A big mistake is to compare the players from both codes - its almost like religion - you get born into a certain code and that's why you are there. It is a credit to the game of rugby league that some of the games greats came from Union, were embraced and placed in the highest esteem. I would like to think that players who came from Union to league and made it were good enough to start with but ended up as much better players.

I don't buy into the "chip on the shoulder" theory. I can really understand how Union, to a League follower, is an illogical and messy sequence of plays punctuated by lots of stoppages and very little "rugby". The opportunities for the likes of Chris Ashton, Dan Carter, SBW etc seem too far and few between, considering how good these lads are and compared with how much ball they would get if they were playing League.

Interesting thread this.

For my sins, i watch quite a bit of union because as well as a league fan I am a sports fan at heart.

If you watch the tri nations or the super 14, you will see a lot of great rugby played, and there are some terrificly talented players playing rugby union.

However when it gets to the world cup, it is much like the football world cup, where it becomes incredibly cagy , and the teams are petrified of taking any risks whatsoever.

My main criticisms of union are

1) rewarded for kicking into touch
2) time wasted at scrums and lineouts is just laughable
3) killing the game with a few mins to ago is ridiculously easy

I have got nothing good to say about Union at all, awful to watch, awful supporters. Cannot see the attraction at all.

Come on... Get off the fence...

You can't generalise like that and to say "the great history of our game has been based on bringing through players from union" which is a joke. They make up a small percentage of those who have played the game. Unless of course you want to start saying the likes of Shaun Edwards was ex-union because he played it at schoolboy level.

My son plays Union and now he is 17 an the rules are full union rules he can't wait to go to Uni to try and find an RL side to play for. The reason for this is he is a back and Union is a forward dominated game. We have friends at the club who wax lyrical about rucks, mauls and line outs being very skilful but if you are stuck out on the wing as the ball gets taken beck into the forwards time and time again you start to get a bit fed up!



What Thomas has done in the union game may be legendary there but given he only came to league well past his sell by date it means nothing here. Now Jonathan Davies has far more kudos and deserves far more respect in league circles than Thomas because Davies became an excellent league player in part because he came here in his prime not when he was due to retire.

Odd that the Scots watch an English Establishment game... Wonder why they never went down the RL route. Well i have ordered the Tony Collins book, so i should know more after that.

Not really, most south walians are English by decent having moved there for work in the pits and steel works. Until the law changed, not many, as a percentage, spoke Welsh. North wales, where my family are from, is very different. All my family have Welsh as a first language.

The Scots are well..... Scottish!! Thought they would have switched just as readily as us, if only to cock-a-snook at the English. But as i say, i don't know enough to know the reason why

And that's middle to upper class is it?

I think when we split up from union we very nearly had Wales in RL,union then decided to turn their backs on Welsh players getting paid so this stopped them coming from the dark side I think.( I am sure if I am incorrect somebody will put this right but this is what I have been told).

Whats that got to do with the price of cheese?

It is very much the establishment game in Scotland as well. It's the same type of people that are in the Scottish Conservatives. Union is popular in the private schools there and taken seriously at their universities like St Andrews, Edinburgh etc, the typical Scottish lawyer or accountant will be into union.

But the average working class Scot who likes beer and fried Mars bars will say rugby's a game for rich poofters.

In Wales however as other posters have pointed out, it is very much the game of the working classes.

Ireland is an interesting one, one of my flatmates is Irish, she reckons that when she was growing up, rugby union was viewed with suspicion in the Republic, the real sports there were hurling, Gaelic football and football, rugby was always associated with being the game the colonial English brought. But there has been a definite change in the last 10 years with union growing in popularity thanks to the emergence of high profile players like Brian O'Driscoll, Ronan O'Gara etc, and it is definitely more accepted as a mainstream sport.

Wigan Peer wrote:Odd that the Scots watch an English Establishment game... Wonder why they never went down the RL route. Well i have ordered the Tony Collins book, so i should know more after that scotlandrl.com/index.php Scottish rugby union is very much split into 2 catagories. 1. The FP (former pupil) clubs with are by and large based in the central belt (Edinburgh and Glasgow) and north and are more or less considered middle class . 2. The Border clubs from the mill towns like Hawick , Gala , Kelso , Selkirk , Langholm etc. These are very much working class clubs where most of the Scottish players who took up Rugby League originated from . Regards , EW PS dont knock the fried mars bar until you have tried it (i haven't)

Wigan Peer wrote:Odd that the Scots watch an English Establishment game... Wonder why they never went down the RL route. Well i have ordered the Tony Collins book, so i should know more after that scotlandrl.com/index.php Scottish rugby union is very much split into 2 catagories. 1. The FP (former pupil) clubs with are by and large based in the central belt (Edinburgh and Glasgow) and north and are more or less considered middle class . 2. The Border clubs from the mill towns like Hawick , Gala , Kelso , Selkirk , Langholm etc. These are very much working class clubs where most of the Scottish players who took up Rugby League originated from . Regards , EW PS dont knock the fried mars bar until you have tried it (i haven't)