Sam Burgess Union debut

Quote: Him "
Let's look at this a little deeper shall we?

Association football fans are loyal to country and club equally, refer to Rugby fans as "egg chasers" and view them as posh gits who are probably called Tarquin and married to Jemima. Other than that, your average soccer fan doesn't give "rugga" a second thought, other than when the International side are playing or Sir Johnny of Toulon is dropping another world cup winning last second .....etc...etc.

Rugby Union fans are split into 3 camps. Firstly, you have the week in week out attendees (currently 10,900 or so average). These are not dissimilar to your average RL fans and are probably affiliated to a club as well as maybe running out for an amateur side or have kids that do. 21,000 of these fans recently preferred to watch Leicester Tigers play instead of England v Australia, which was on at the same time.

Then there are the band-waggoners, who will attend internationals, pretend to be knowledgeable, but in reality, have only just bought their first England shirt because they got tickets through work.

Lastly there are the tail-gate partiers. These lot know their rugby, having attended a rugga school and because their father used to own half of Yorkshire, scotland, lancashire, cumbria (delete as required) and they married Jemima, whose daddy is the High commissioner of India, they can afford to spend thousands having their old school chum over for a bit of nosh at the back of the range rover before KO.
The first and third groups above probably don't give "sokkah" a second thought whilst the middle lot are all probably big fans of a London Premier League side.

Union and it's fanbases feel no malice towards football and it's the same the other way around.

Rugby League fans fall generally into 1 category. That is that they are fiercely loyal to their club side, which is steeped in tradition and has strong local ties to the community and the industry that is/was the heartbeat of their town. Past players from a bygone era would have worked locally, lived locally, played locally and are now probably running a pub locally. They are in the majority, situated along 1 road in England and are split in their opinion about the need for "expansion". Some welcome change and the chance to promote the greatest game, but others would rather see the game stay as it is, a local rather than truly national sport. They will attend home games that are included on their season ticket/pass, but need to be encouraged with "offers" to attend anything else other than finals, a FACT represented by the poor averages for their cup and play-off games.
They are probably soccer fans as well, given that most towns that have a pro league team have a better supported soccer team, but many detest Union and its fans with a venom that s quite disturbing. Often heard to cite events from France 70 years ago as the reason for all their woes, they suspect (but have never delivered proof of) their self proclaimed The Greatest Game is "kept in its place" by a Media that is controlled by Union group #3 (see above). The wail and gnash their teeth whilst pulling at their sack cloth clothes at the news that SBW or Sam Burgess has been signed by a wealthier sport, selectively forgetting the raids their game made into Union in the years prior to 1995.
In their blankets of insecurity, they cite "double headers, rounded attendance figures, fat overweight props and a plethora of other unsubstantiatable accusations to try and make Union look smaller, more foolish and "boring" in the hope that it will make the self proclaimed Greatest Game more popular. Alas, attendances continue to fall. I have to say, the claim that all 82,000 at Twickenham for an international have no idea what is going on is one of the more colourfully insecure claims I have heard in recent years on here.
They cite "bigger TV audiences" for Superleague, ignoring the smaller TV deal they have financially. The cry foul when the BBC doesn't run wall to wall promotion of their sport, write letters to the editor when a RL players is overlooked for SPOTY and brand anyone who doesn't agree with them a Union troll

So in a nutshell, Soccer fans know of but don't care about Union and don't know about League
Union fans don't care about soccer or League although they might know who's top of the premier league
League fans think the world hates them and everyone is out to get them. Some of them hate Union so much they will subscribe to a Pay TV channel to watch it though

RLFANS.COM MERCHANDISE

RLFANS.COM SPONSORS & HELP