I've been a Rhinos supporter all my life and I'm trying to understand the fascination with Rugby Union. I'd love to be able to watch and understand it but I cant see the logic. They fight like mad to win the ball then kick it. I sometimes think I'm not watching the same game as the commentators as every pass, every tackle is fantastic, there seems to be a complete over hype going on. Im not fully convinced the skill factor is very high because if the ref blew up for all infringements like knock on's, offside's etc the game would never get going. The advantage rule sometimes last's minutes its unbelieveable. I think the main point is field position I guess. I watched the Eng v Wales game and out of the 53 points, just 10 were from tries, so I guess that says it all. Any help in understanding would be appreciated !!!

The legend that is Laurie Daley can answer your question

“Rugby League is a simple game, played by simple people, Rugby Union is a complex game played by Wankers”

Personally, I can watch, and enjoy both games, but I don't compare the 2 codes. People don't compare 'Polo' with 'Water Polo'

How I see it, is it's a game aimed at minimising risk.

Pick up a grubber in your in-goal, you can ground it and get the ball back instead of running it out.
Ball caught in your 22, call mark, slow the play down and give it a 40-yard boot.
Ball caught by a back outside of 22, don't run it back in or try to evade, get it kicked.
Flowing passing move off the back of a ruck becomes a tip on to a prop for a 1yard gain.

It's very much a team game, which stifles individual play. It promotes winning penalties, with little reward for tries.

It's pi$$ poor to us as our sport promotes the core principles of rugby, rather than set pieces & complicated team moves. Their players are specialists, who have a very specific job to do, which is often not very pretty (to us).

Chess & Checkers is a great analogy. In chess (union), every piece has a specific move it can carry out, the game is complex and quite boring. Checkers (League), every piece is the same, it's fast, better to watch and simple.


Why is it more popular? Money, media, demographic, marketing, more participants.

Chess and checkers is not a good analogy. It implies RU is complex, and league simple, and neither is the case. The off the ball movement, lines of running, structure of play in attack and defence, actions in contact (for both ball carriers and tacklers) are all complex elements of the sport. If you don't understand the sport, then it may well look as much like a game of British bulldog, and RU looks like kick tennis + pileon for those than don't understand it.

Chess is a good analogy, but like most analogies has its limitations.

Both League and Union have complexities. However, many of the league complexities are transferrable to union but not the other way round.

One of the sayings I like is that Union is a contest for the ball and League is a contest with the ball.

The main difference for me is that in League if you have the ball you are safe (relatively). Its a game of possession. For union, its a game of territory. In possession or not you can score from anywhere in the opposition half, and can concede from anywhere in your own half.

I'd agree with Richie, having played both sports albeit at a relatively low level.

They're not really that much different. The core principles of the game are the same - you run, catch, pass and tackle with the aim of getting the ball over your opponent's line without them doing the same to you.

The main difference is how much you're allowed to compete for the ball once your opponent has it, which necessarily has laws around it to make it a fair contest that teams are constantly pushing to see how much they can get away with. If anything Union carries a greater degree of unpredictability, because every time a team carries the ball into contact there's a real risk they are going to lose it either by getting turned over or giving away a penalty.

It's not that long ago in the grand scheme of things that kicking duels between full-backs were the done thing in League. I can remember the game going through a spell in the early 80s when they came back into fashion, as teams sought to win the field position battle by forcing errors. It's also not that long ago that games of League were finishing either tryless or with a handful of scores (wasn't there a 4-2 Grand Final in Australia mid 80s?), so it's not like we've always been a high-scoring, fast paced sport by comparison.

IMO there's a lot of inherent negativity towards Union from League fans that comes from history, rather than what is presented in front of them. They sit down to watch the sport with the intention of finding faults in it, in the same way someone who is anti-League might sit down and wonder why they just keep bashing into each other then hoofing it up in the air on the last tackle. If you enjoy watching League then I'd recommend taking in some Super 15 rugby from the southern hemisphere, where the emphasis is less on kicking and more on moving the ball either out of or before contact than it is in the northern hemisphere.

That said, I'll still never get my head around why a rolling maul can't be obstruction when you've got no chance of getting to the bloke with the ball at the back...

Fully agree. I have many memories of long kicking duals in league in the 60s which made most of the players from both sides off side and so they had to wait for either one of the kickers to make an error or put them onside.

The rolling maul used to be called a loose scrum but the players had to stay bound with less of the peeling off allowed.

Not certain they're that close. I've spent a fair bit of time launching people into the sky and getting my head wedged into people's s and all it served to do was make me love rugby league all the more. Rather uniquely for a back row/second row at union I'm also a handy goal kicker which flies in the face of their conventions.
The amount of time consumed by lineouts and scrums are what make our games polar opposites.
And a code which can't utilise an athlete like Sam Burgess can't be worth watching.

The main difference between the two sports, which contributed heavily to how the game is played, is that in Union you are capable of conceding points when in possession, whereas in league it's rare to unheard of.
So, in Union you want to be away from your own posts even when you have the ball.
There are other differences because there are set piece contests that dictate a certain body shape amongst forwards but I don't think they are major.
Personally I think league is the more complex game at top level, support play is on a different level for example.

My problem with Union is that League has spoilt me. I find it too frustrating and too similar. I get that scrummaging and line outs are skills, but its also frustrating to watch some of the ball handling skills of the more set piece specialists which would be unforgivable in league, i get that kicking the ball and going in to contact are tactical choices, but seeing a chubby guy go into contact instead of going through what in league would be a gaping hole is frustrating, or not taking advantage of broken fields and a run up on kick returns is frustrating.

The amount of kicked penalties looks to me a lack of confidence in the ability of players to execute 'rugby skills'. England may have 'lost' because they went for the try on that final penalty, but they had 5 penalties they kicked before that. Why go for the try with 3 minutes left when you didnt have the confidence to get over from 20 yards for the other 77 minutes? Especially with the size of the ingoal areas and how RU defend kicks to the corner. The lack of dummy runs, set plays, and support play just seems criminal. Even something as simple as a player picking a line to hit a gap seems alien.

One of the main things Union has going for it is how competitive teams can be who play very different styles and in some cases ability. For example, its almost impossible for an RL team can win a game with vastly inferior backs but a better pack, as for roughly 50% of the time the opposition will have the ball, often in attacking situations. In Union it's quite possible for a team with a better pack to almost starve the opposition backs of possession. That doesn't make the skills necessarily entertaining (certainly to RL fans), but the closeness of the game itself makes it a spectacle.

That's why it frustrates the heck out of me when RL - including its own fans - seem to want to push for mythical purity in rules and interpretations which will benefit the better team every time. Even more bizarrely, then allow said best team to enforce its rule interpretations on the weaker teams.

We seem to have lost sight at international level that in the end all that matters is the contest and the result. IMO Union rightly fights any attempts to push international rules towards Super 15 (or however many teams there are). It might be more "entertaining" but would make it very much harder for England or Wales to compete.

Having said that, some of the media stuff is annoying - note how often the "plucky losers" are cited in reference to the Union WC when a minnow gets hammered. The same thing in RL last year was simply evidence that there is no international competition etc.

Agree with this.
I said the same on a thread on the VT, it's why I'm in favour of bringing back competitive scrums as a means of where the "lesser" team can find a way of competing with the "better" team.
Currently we only have 2 ways of competing, in attack or in defence. Occasionally the kicking game is a factor but that's usually only between 2 well matched teams. Union has attack, defence, scrums, lineouts and the breakdowns all as areas where teams can compete. So your attack might not be brilliant, your defence could be a bit shaky but if you're bang on with your scrums, lineouts and breakdowns you'll cause the opposition a few problems. In League if a teams attack and defence aren't up to scratch they'll get 40-50 points shoved up em.

On the same thread Smokey made some other good suggestions of maybe altering the 40-20 to a 30-30 and having the game as 4 quarters rather than 2 halves so it breaks up some of the dominant periods a team may have.

Union is only competitive because it has 30 players on the pitch, as opposed to 26. There simply is not the room to do anything, whether you have best backs or not. That is the exactly reason it is crap to watch. It is ok having a competitive game, but if it is boring as hell, which it is, then what is the point?

Not sure I agree with that - agree its boring to watch - the problem with union is the focus is on territory so the first option is always to kick deep and gain position that way - it would be like RL kicking over the dead ball line all the time. There seems little incentive for the backs to run the ball - bizarre game. The differential for a try isn't big enough - Farrell kicked 8 penalties and the Welsh guy 9 in one game - only 2 trys!!

Agree.
Despite there being more players on the pitch there is often a lot more space. It's the nature of the game and the different ways of competing that make it more even.
And as you say the points for penalties are too high. It's boring but I don't blame teams at all for taking penalties. I've often wondered why teams even bother going for tries. I'd just recruit a top drop goal specialist and every time we're within 30-40m of the posts I'd go for a drop goal. And obviously take every penalty available.