The best thing Sam can do is get back to League asap. What a truly dreadful game that was last night.

It was classic northern hemisphere RU, both teams doing all they could to con the ref and try and gain a penalty, so they could take a pop at goal.

Although it will probably never happen, they should copy RL's scoring system with 4 pts for a try and 2 for a conv/pen and 1 for a dg, this may just reduce the inherent negativity within the game.

Was thinking the same thing. The RU points scoring system just doesn't really encourage open rugby. Why try to build a move for 5 points when you can con an easy penalty for 3?

Including the dwarfish presenter in sports casual?

Er, it's five points for a try in RU...

But as they've already found, giving more more points for tries doesn't encourage try-scoring. In fact, the more valuable you make tries, the more worthwhile it seems to conceded penalties to save them.

What makes me laugh is that they need a bonus point system to try to encourage teams to score tries, even when they're clearly on top.

Until 1971 union's scoring was three for a try, two for a conversion, three for a penalty kick and until 1948 it was FOUR for a drop goal
In 1992 it then changed to 5 points for a try, still really hasn't encouraged scoring tries for the negative/totally talent free sides like England.
I wasted enough time watching 8 minutes of NZ dross last week, I can't be d with watching shiote not to mention the refs deliberately ignoring certain infractions (knock ons are a fave with onion refs) whilst pulling up on minor petty incidents often giving yellow cards for them

They could do with keeping the try at 5 points and either increasing the conversion to 3 or leaving it at 2 but reducing the penalty to 2 and drop goal to 1.

A drop goal isn't supposed to be a method of accumulating lots of points. It's meant to be a way of splitting 2 evenly matched teams by nudging yourself slightly ahead.

The objective of any points system in either code of rugby should be to encourage attempts at try scoring.
Unfortunately, since England are so powerful in the Union world, those points systems won't change because England would have to totally change their style of play and what suits them best.

In Union, because there's no guarantee of possession, there has to be a significant punishment otherwise defending teams could just keep giving penalties away rather than let the attack through. But rather than encouraging attacking teams to take 3 points, Union should use the sin bin to discourage defending teams giving away penalties.

No-ones forcing you to watch it. Oh that's right, you are the bloke who hates Union so much you paid good money to subscribe to BT to watch it for several months (and probably still do)

Keep it going, only 17 more pages until you get to a century of bitterness and jealousy. It's so funny I've told some mates to have a read. Normally you have to pay for this kind of entertainment

keep going. 17 to go

Talking about the daft points system in RU as someone was - last night BBC kept posting "PENALTY" excitedly in Twitter everytime someone had a kick. So I replied "So William Webb-Ellis picked up the ball, put it on a plastic tee and kicked for goal did he?." A joke of a "sport."

The RU world cup is an amazing event and only something RL could dream of.

It so professional and well promoted.

The pubs were buzzing with it last night.

An unsurpassed marketing triumph. Talk about the Emperor's new clothes.....jeez

RWC 2015 seems to be a hot topic on a number of Rugby League forums. This would appear to be a strange phenomenon that is unique to League as I have scanned a number of Union and soccer forums looking for paranoid rants back when RLWC 2013 was on and can't find any.....

Why is it that RL fans of a certain ilk feel the need to deride Rugby Union in regards to the spectacle they are currently running across England and Wales? They are averaging 50,000+ per game, England got 8 million TV viewers at the weekend and from what little I have seen on TV, the fans seem to be enjoying themselves?

We all are of the opinion that Union is a slow and ponderous game and pales into insignificance when compared to League, but the REALITY IS that the general public, when faced with the opportunity to attend or tune into International Rugby Union will do so in far greater numbers than will do so for League. Rather than try to score points against the bigger and better run sport which is more popular with comments like "the Emperor's New Clothes"why not accept it for what it is....a tournament that is light years of anything we could ever hope to produce. It's slick, it's seamless and it has, regardless of your one eyed opinion, captured the attention of a fair chunk of the population.

It will hurt it a bit though if England end up going out at the group stage. Host nations success always adds massively to an event.