Dark horse

Quote: gutterfax "Really? Your definition of pretty popular and that of the OED are on seperate levels then. There are a load of AFL clubs in Britain and the GB side plays in a Euro and International cup.....it is in no way "pretty popular"....neither was RL in Italy. 73,000+ Watched the Union match v the AB's a few weeks back, with another 32,000 last week v the wannabees...that's more people than watched the 2 ANZAC RL tests this year between the 2 best RL sides on the planet......and in a soccer mad country, I would say that that is the definition of "pretty popular". HTH'"

Pretty popular, relatively speaking.

As expansion in other countries was very small in the mid-20th century, a 24 team league is pretty popular. If you're going to compare to other sports, it's obviously easy to bash the game in any direction... yet achieves nothing.

Quote: gutterfax "So, a sport that was amateur and required it's players to be amateur threatened any players who played a professional sport with expulsion......I see no problem here, given GB RL was full of Welsh Union players who faced the same ban, but took the cash anyway. If you play a game, in this case RU, you abide by the rules and instructions of that games governing body......it's the same for any sport. '"

I know you're doing your best to defend union from unfair bashing (and most of your defence I usually agree with), but the fact that you can't see a problem with one governing body preventing people from having a freedom of choice by using its influence to ban people is just ridiculous.

Was Italian RL professional? Does being a professional once mean you're not ever able to be amateur again? Were other professional sportsmen banned from playing union? Don't try and dress this one up, it was just an attempt by rugby union governing bodies to stump the growth of league.
And just because it happened in other countries also doesn't make it not a problem. Quite the opposite.

Quote: gutterfax "The 'it's not fair" chip. You paint a false picture of health in the Italian game from the 60's.....it was a small flash in the pan and as is usually the case in "expansion areas", wasn't followed up with any support from a RL central international body. ......therefore it's demise is immediately blamed on the IRB/IRFU rather than THE FACT THAT NOTHING WAS done to counter the threat from the IRFU.

I find it's more often than not the case, that in 99% of incidents, the FAILINGS of League can easily be blamed on Union rather than to accept that TGG dropped the ball on many occasions.'"

So what could they have done?

Quote: gutterfax "cheese and gravy is nice with chips too BTW That sounds utterly disgusting.