I'm always defending RL goalkickers compared with their RU equivalent.

It's just occurred to me that the stats may tell a different story. Anyone know the average % success rate for place kickers in top flight RL and RU leagues?

I don't know the answer but I do believe it's 50 union attempted penalty goal attempts to every one in Rugby League. (Ok I'm making that up but can't be far off).

Funny, but there is truth in that though. The more goal kicks attempted, the more accurate the result. The more attempted, the more practise the kickers get, therefore it should be no surprise if a RU goal kicker has better percentage stats.

Goal kicking is greater part of a RU game than a RL game, and shouldn't be used as an excuse to liven up what is already a very dull sport.

Different balls though. Aren't the Union balls designed more with kicking in demand.

Rugby league ball-

Rugby union ball-

Some things have been mentioned above which makes sense as to why they seem to have better kickers but here is another one.

More tries are scored in RL than RU therefore most of the kicks in RL are from tries most of which are scored more than 10m wide of the goal making it harder to kick. Most of RU conversions are from pens not tries and most of their game is played up the middle therefore when they get a pen it is normally a more simple kick than a conversion attempt from a try in RL.

Odemwingie, Rugby Union offers 3 points for penalty kicks, so there is more incentive to kick them. The international goalkickers from the Six Nations, SA, Argentina and NZ have a better range than RL kickers, just YouTube players like Springboks Morne and Francois Steyn who can kick from their own half, or from 45 metres out near the sideline.

I think it more comes down to A) it is harder to score a try due to the number of players, the rules and the lack of creativity in players B) no one cares if they win a game by 3 kicks to 2 (can you imagine the outrage at a RL game if that was the result of 80mins of play!) and C) its called "kick and clap" for a reason!

get em' down a sea level and i bet they can't

saying that when i was 17/18 i could knock em' over from the halfway line..no problem

There is no doubt, across the board, RU kickers are better.

It is simply a matter of putting more importancve on that part of the game in training.
The odd one or two in Rugby League prove very skillful and can compete in the stats but in a consistancy test RU would be better.

I think Rugby League has a lot to learn from the kicking techniques in Union and the kiking coaches they emply.......however, if it's a choice, I'd rather see tries than goals!

Kicking is much more a priority in union than league. When union changed tries to 5 points they should have just reduced all kicks to 2. the 5 point try has had very little effect on the game.
Also with 15 players it is easy to hide a poor rugby player but excellent kicker in a team.

It's not so much the goalkicking that they are better but rather drop goals, Generally when you get a one point game in league some of the drop goal attempts are pretty woeful whereas in union they seem to boom them over from a long way out. Again when they're worth 3 points I suppose they pratice them a lot more.

I know at Hull kr we must have the worst drop out kickers in the league, from under our sticks we're lucky to get the ball 35 yards.

Could there be a more boring video