I've no chip on my shoulder, I've trained at and with two different union clubs this year and am considering a run out with the thirds of one such club.

But if I am to be educated I'd rather it be someone with an accurate recollection of what it was really like when union was a shamatuer sport.

What relevance does it have to todays sport ?

I'm agreeing with you regarding Southern Hemisphere rugby

If mine are rose tinted then yours are Stevie Wonder's! I was brought up to be open minded thank goodness and the opinions expressed were about the two different games of rugby. It is unfortunate that you unable to rise above the class based history of the two sports to discuss the merits of modern day rugby of both codes.

Of course I am aware of the broken time payments history and the snobbery and the shamateurism and "boot money payments" that went on. I recall Ronnie Cowan telling me of when he first played for the Lions and he was shocked to find "taxi" money from Selkirk to the South of England in his boots after training.

The "tainting"was only one way of course in those days because League stood to gain from an open door policy and Union to lose.

However I also remember the League welcome that most Union signings received in their first season which was also only one way. Alun Rees Wales International stand off signing received a broken nose from a deliberate foul in his first game for Leeds. This welcome was typical through the years right up to the John Gallagher spear tackle. The recent BBC programe on Jonathan Davies showed a funny clip of him in the Widnes dressing room before his first RL game, I think, and his teammates were all around him stroking his nose and making comments as to how it would look after the game.

Times have moved on and the Luddites are in the minority. Union is now professional and has the money and on it's day offers good rugby skills and entertainment for followers of the handling game.

None, but you and Juan were the ones that started waxing lyrical about some fictional, historical halcyon days of free love between the two sports that simply didn't exist. I was simply calling foul on the re-writing of history.

A lot more dynamic. If you browse the BBC Sport site from London you don't even get RL in the main nav.

No re-writing history and no waxing lyrical. Just a testamony of my personal experience of the overlap of the two codes, from the 60's right up to the Millenium, in the North of England. That is how real history is recorded and not by some class bitter comments from someone who wasn't a witness at the time. However the point that best underlines our comments on the overlapping of the two codes is that someone with such a shoulder chip now tries and get a game with a local Union' third team ( no fourths I take it?). Despite your angst I am sure you will get a good Union welcome

Not waxing lyrical or re-writing history at all, just recounting my experiences which were at odds to the "history" that you prefer to read, I'm trying to add a spoonful of sugar to your bitter tea...

Totally agree.

As the "superior" game always has.

I played both games regularly in my youth. Ian McGeegan and Ken Dalby both being my school masters.

Feel qualified to comment regardless of others previous comments.

One game is easier to play and the other is easier to watch.

I find it rediculous that people talk about "the Southern Hemisphere" as if they all play the same game. Really? SA play the same game as NZ? They approach rugby completely differently. The Blue Bulls main attacking weapon in last years Super Rugby? Have a guess? The 5 metre lineout drive. SA rugby is a carbon copy of the way England played when Will Carling was captain. Massive intimidating forwards, a kicking fly half, a huge crash bang centre as captain and a couple of decent, pacy runners if needed. But it's all about the forwards.
Australia don't play a rucking game from choice, they have no scrummage and they haven't produced a decent front row forward in living memory. An average Lions team took them apart, only awful, one sided refereeing kept that tour from being a complete debacle for them.

Union will always be dominated by the simple fact that you are as likely to give a penalty away in posession as you are without posession (how many times do you give away a penalty in league when you have the ball - almost never). So even with the ball you can give away points in your own half. Where you play the game is critical and you can't go wide before you go forward - and kicking and forwards (the 10 men you talk about) dictate both those. The only significant difference between the way NZ play and the way England play is that NZ are far more ruthless and efficient when they turn the ball over or when they receieve a poor kick and chase. Until that moment they play the exact same game. The fact England dominated NZ in the forwards isn't because English rugby is all about forwards, it's because we were better than them in that critical part of the game.

Phil Larder once checked the "live" time, ie how long the ball was actually in play, for both games.

IIRC Union = 27 minutes League was over 60 minutes.

I'd also suspect that the anecdote has gained and lost some real "in play" time over the years in its telling, you'd also need to question whether a ball held in a scrum or ruck/rolling maul has been classed as "in play" because no-one has the ball in hand, in theory there can be measurable passages of play in Union with no-one touching the ball, even two full backs kicking the ball the length of the field to each other are still "in play".

It all boils down to the technical aspects of Union and the fact that some League supporters don't bother or have no interest in learning them in which case they may as well be comparing RL to football.

it wasn't an "anecdote". It was published research in the official RFL Coaching Manual at the time and included soccer and Grid Iron times. The times were based on the ball being out of play ie off the playing field. I don't believe that generally it will have changed significantly

I have never taken this so called technical argument in the Union game its just a made up justification for slowing the game down.

imho its just an excuse to simply kill the ball and simply to deprive the opposition of possession.