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.

Im sure we can but the only reason will be to poach them to rugby union

Because of a 7's comp? No thanks.

Olympic sports get more central funding than none olympic sports right? Rugby Union Sevens is bad news for Rugby League

They wouldn't have to pick RL players as they will only pick players registered with the RU in their country. We gave up the word "Rugby" without a fight, can't blame them for now using it to feather their nest.

Persoanlly I'd love to see the ARL get someone like the Cook Islands signed up, then have joint registered players and send across a RL team from NRL eligible players and win the thing!

I see your point but I'm not sure that that will actually happen. In a gam where the players are mostly pro, there's not much on offer. I doubt the FA, FAW, SFA and IFA will be handed a penny if we have a combined GB football team this time.

Although that does raise another question- why are so many of these 'amateurs' essentially pros who are given a wage out of lottery money?

I dont understand why there is so much interest and defensiveness about seven's being included in the olympics with people basically saying we must get league players involved and it would be a travesty of justice of no league players were involved. I've watched the IRB Sevens World Series on ITV several months ago and found it quite entertaining. For those who don't know what that is, the details can be found on here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRB_Sevens_World_Series The point is that England already have a team that plays in an international sevens competition and no-one bats an eyelid that league players are not involved. People are assuming that come Olympics time, the selectors are going to start from scratch and pick a team from union, league and sevens, where in reality, they are just going to go with the same seven's squad who took part in whatever is the previous competition. I'm not saying league players wouldn't be good at sevens but you can't just expect the selectors to drop players who play the game weeek in week out, for players who just stick their hands up when it comes to the olympics. I mean everyone on here has stated the primary reason why they would want league players involved = publicity. You really think league players are going to walk into a squad, play all of the games, win the medal and just go back to playing league? There's a bloke who plays for England called Ben Gollins who has scored 176 tries for England at sevens and no doubt that by the time the sevens is played at the olympics there will be another English player who has scored a couple of hundred tries - why are the selectors going to split up a side that plays together in favour of players who dont play the game?

I dont understand why there is so much interest and defensiveness about seven's being included in the olympics with people basically saying we must get league players involved and it would be a travesty of justice of no league players were involved. I've watched the IRB Sevens World Series on ITV several months ago and found it quite entertaining. For those who don't know what that is, the details can be found on here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRB_Sevens_World_Series The point is that England already have a team that plays in an international sevens competition and no-one bats an eyelid that league players are not involved. People are assuming that come Olympics time, the selectors are going to start from scratch and pick a team from union, league and sevens, where in reality, they are just going to go with the same seven's squad who took part in whatever is the previous competition. I'm not saying league players wouldn't be good at sevens but you can't just expect the selectors to drop players who play the game weeek in week out, for players who just stick their hands up when it comes to the olympics. I mean everyone on here has stated the primary reason why they would want league players involved = publicity. You really think league players are going to walk into a squad, play all of the games, win the medal and just go back to playing league? There's a bloke who plays for England called Ben Gollins who has scored 176 tries for England at sevens and no doubt that by the time the sevens is played at the olympics there will be another English player who has scored a couple of hundred tries - why are the selectors going to split up a side that plays together in favour of players who dont play the game?

Depends on whether they were serious about winning the gold medal.

Imagine a squad that included the likes of Inglis, Hayne, Slater, Folau, Hodges, Thurston, Watmough, etc. playing sevens.

I'd tune in to watch, that's for sure.

So that they had the best players available to win the medal.

Would you fancy a team of RU players or RL players to win

Sevens or any abbreviated version of the game is about 4 key skills / attributes.
pace,
Passing ( keeping the ball alive)
Tackling
Stamina to run up and down the length of a field non stop for 15 minutes.


I have no doubt that when it comes to tackling, passing and stamina Rl would come out on top. Even now RU is still predominantly kicking wher Rl is about passing.

The funding comes about entirely because it`s a rich sport for the ruling elite and theres very little the RFL can do about that .

Some interesting points on this topic. Is this guy still banned?