Are you really that incapable of wrapping your head around the fact that the RFL and RFU play the same game, rugby football, just with different administrative bodies?

He can you clearly have trouble with the obvious.

You can't leave the original governing body and take the name with you. RU own the name Rugby end of, they have owned it from the start because they are the unbroken governing body going right back to the creation of the sport.

By your logic should Scotland vote to leave the Union UK but Wales, N Ireland and England choose to stay it can still call itself Great Britain.

Rugby in RL defines the style of football played when the Northern Union broke away. Had the founding fathers known the break would be as permanent irreversible they would probably have dropped the Rugby moniker asap. For historical reasons we are stuck with it now.

Lets get this in perspective this is an application for a domain name. Not a ruling on the use of the word Rugby.

As the RFL did not apply, then the UK government is bound to put across it's opinion to try and sway the arguement in favour of the IRB, rather than the other application.

You can try and buy any name on the internet, as far as I am aware this type of thing only crops up where different people apply for the same name.

I'm sure there are lots of other derivations that can be used instead.

Rugby.com
rugby.org
rugby.net
rugby.co.uk
rugby.TV
etc


Unless I've miss read the purpose of the body involved.

If the RFU are the sole owners of the name Rugby, we could end up with a name change before long, they seem to be dropping the name Union, every time you hear the commentators, the just call there game rugby, so if they have all the naming wrights why let another sport use the name
it happened some years back with wrestling in the US they were taken to Cort to make them change there name, they called them selves the WWF
& had to change it to the WWE, supposedly cost them a small fortune in re branding, the company that took them to Cort was the World wildlife federation, lets hope the RFU are not getting ready to stick the knife in

Ridiculous comparison.

The rugby schism is directly comparable to the christian church schisms. It'd be like the UK government saying that the Protestant or Orthodox churches cannot call themselves christian churches as the Catholic church owns the name 'Christian'.

Pommy RL fans are so damn beta not a single one of you will even bother pointing this out to your local member though...

It's a TLD so it'll be england.rugby not rugby.co.uk or whatever.

Porn sites are getting .xxx, in Australia the AFL applied for .afl (might find some issues with US leagues though) and I'm assuming the ARL will apply for .nrl if they haven't already.

Basically it means that if anyone is on the net and types in australia.rugby or queensland.rugby they'll be sent to the ARU and QRU sites, not the ARL and QRL sites...

Actually to get a domain name you have to apply to the company that registers that TLD, now in the case of the companies that run .com/.co.uk/.org and the other current domains they pretty much let anyone have the domain if it isn't currently in use - but in theory they could say "No sorry we don't want to sell you a domain" and there would be nothing you could do.

It is for this reason that companies like Coca-cola applied for .coca-cola - essentially to stop anyone else from being able to use the domain.

So, the IRB could in fact turn around and if (for example) Leeds Rhinos apply for Leeds.Rugby say "No sorry, we don't want any Rugby League teams using .rugby" It would be their TLD to do with what they wish. Worse, someone could setup a domain called Leeds.Rugby and do nothing but talk down and post false comments about Leeds Rhinos and it would be the IRB who have final say if they site should be taken down or not.

I understand the RFL didn't apply, but if anything I would argue that either of the 2 companies who also applied for .rugby are more likely to be unbiased in the use of the .rugby domain that the IRB is.

All that, plus it annoyed me that the Government again presumes we don't exist.

Really, some Aussie fans are so utterly ignorant about English sport it's frightening. Rugby is RU, we lost that battle years ago - in case you haven't noticed we have far bigger issues to worry about.

Not so fast Vastman. Many of our clubs are direct unbroken organisations dating to before the great split in 1895. They have every right to call themselves Rugby clubs.

The correct title of our league was originally The Northern RUGBY Football Union and since 1922 The RUGBY Football League. What did you think the R in RFL stood for Rebel. I guess we have the right to call ourselves Union given that historical precedent. We certainly have the right to call ourselves Rugby.

Only last week I was at a Rugby Union event in which Andrew Johns and Brad Fittler were playing and the tannoy commentator repeatedly referred to the two as RUGBY league internationals.

The union lot using Rugby for their game only becomes accepted if we don't challenge it and they kind of get squatters rights to its use. We should continue to use the word Rugby for our game. They have no more right to usurp its usage than we do.

As for the internet domain. The RFL should object to it's use being given exclusively to Union. A court case challenging our right to use the word fron UNION would be wonderful publicity for RUGBY league.