Quote ="Mild mannered Janitor"Historically RU was a player friendly sport (not as much in the way of aggressive tackling, much slower pace to the game). This meant many could play the game without there being a heighten risk of injury and fitness levels did not have to be that high.Many would play into their 50's given the relative gentleness of the sport. RU was as much about the social scene as much as the sport itself.
RL was developed from the need to be a spectator friendly sport to generate the incomes for a professional era, meaning only he fittest, fastest and most creative would get noticed.
Sadly, RL did not spread the word in the early years and concentrated too much on the heartlands.
In those early years RU would openly discriminate and stigmatise those who played RL or even thought of playing RL. As RU was participated in and followed socially by the professional and employers (and southern based media), they held power of the masses. RL was, in those early years played by those from the work houses.
Role forward 100 year, the (incorrely) stigma of playing RL from the RU authorities eventually was lifted, but the masses still pay only lip service to it.
I challenged someone recently who stated about Burgess "RL are welcome to him, as RL is a s**t game anyway". When I asked what he thought it was that was "s**t" the reply was simply...
"always has been, thats what we got told at school by PE teachers, anyway look at the 6 nations and the attendances, RL doesn't compare"
Or put another way, generations of ignorance followed up with a dose of "not really anything about the sport, but because loads watch it, it must be better".
Thats what RL is fighting against.
I suppose the laughable part of it all is that RL has Nigel Wood doing the fighting!'"
This is the kind of reply I was hoping for, as I said, when I was at school we HAD to play Union, we didn't get a choice.
If our game had been given a chance to be played in schools, perhaps things would be different now.
