Durham Giant, rugby (union) only comes into the olympics in 2016. That's Brazil, not the UK.

Except Londons 2012 and this starts '16 doesnt it?

Give his head a shake will you

Change the country and swap the maracana for Twickenham and the principal is still there.

OK. Granted - it'll get a fair amount of media attraction for a couple of days. How seismic is this for Rugby League? Not much, it really isn't. The RWC is more "damaging" by comparison because, [icompared to our crap effort[/i, it's a real World event.

Need to get in all the schools first!
There's still people within 20 miles of the 'heartlands' that don't have the foggiest that Rugby League exists.
At first I thought it daft but i'd be tempted to rebrand as 'League'.

Don't believe the hype. 192 countries play rugby union yet only 4 had a realistic chance of winning the world cup last time round.
in rugby league it's 2 from around 12.
Did you watch any of the last rugby union world cup? I did and it was pish poor. That's not blind bias, but a genuine observation. Argentina were a shining light as they tried to combat the kick kick kick of teams like Australia, England and South Africa.

In France and Catalonia they are known as rugby XIII and rugby XV.

Can you imagine the excitement a cross-code GB Rugby Sevens team would generate?

Don't shoot me for heresy but....

....perhaps this is the ticket to rejoin the codes?

There is a vidoe on youtube (is that term even allowed on here?) of the 1996 Middlesex sevens final.
Watch one of the hard men of 'Rugby', Lawrence Dalaglio, getting thrown around like a rag doll by Gary Connolly.

Couldnt find that but i did find this www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aYbLrhhQ5c

Couldnt find that but i did find this www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aYbLrhhQ5c

Beaten to it by about 20 years.

I live in North Leeds, about five miles from Headingley, within a three mile radius of my house there are four or five Union teams playing in various Yorkshire leagues, we're talking about your average local clubs manned entirely by volunteers and I haven't included the pro Leeds Carnegie RU team in this.

12 years ago when my eldest was still at her Junior school one of the local RU clubs hosted a weekly tag rugby sports lesson at her school, they provided all of the equipment and paid an RU qualified coach from the nearest RU club to host the lessons, culminating in a knock out competition at Carnegie college with a dozen other schools - the whole season was funded entirely by the English Rugby Union.

Fast forward and my brother (a life-long Leeds RLFC supporter) is a qualified RU coach at his local club because his two boys wanted to play, the club that they play for has a team in every age group from 8 to 19 and then three senior sides - again this is a Yorkshire League club with no professionals involved - I volunteered to set up a web site for them and now run that and the amount of funding and support that they get from the English RU has to be seen to be believed.

In short the ERU support the code right down to grass roots, there are no splinter groups, there is no other organisation wanting to run their own leagues and play at a different time of year, there is no diversion of funds into ill-advised experiments, there is just a well run tier of support for volunteers to lean on while trying to organise 150 to 200 kids (per club, remember this is times four in my local area) into organised games, training sessions, cup competitions and leagues every week from September to April.

Its staggeringly efficient and by comparison the Rugby League are stuck somewhere in the stone age.