Watched the France v England game the English side seemed
to lack basic ball skills, also Ashton was 1 v 1 with the full back
but chose to chip and chase over him, also had 3 players in support ,wouldnt have thought twice when he was at wigan
would have took the fullback on or held it up for the support
to score.
The Guinness prem is a poor standard compared to Magners
league and the super 14 comps this is reflected in the
Heineken cup results, internationals , fitness etc, it all seems to
played in slow motion in the Guinness Prem and England
internationals.

I think it's a pish take, to be honest.

There is not much difference between the two national teams. After every England RU game, all you hear is fans/media complaining about the lack of creativity in the team, slagging off the halfbacks, shocking kicking game, saying its time to pension off the likes of Wilkinson and move give young talent a chance. Throw in a bit of blaming the game's administrators for not knowing their booty from their elbow and having too much reliance on overseas players in the current game. You get all the same after England RL, apart from you don't get the extra miles of broadsheet comment and know-it-all ex players writing editorials.

To put it into context, if RL fans got the media coverage that they wished for on par with union, then after every time the Kangaroos beat us we would have the opportunity to read Garry Schofield and Stevo write all over the Times and Guardian about how garbage England RL are.

I saw the opposite view recently on the Sale forum where someone was praising the youth structure within RL compared to Union which is still overwhelmingly dependent on recruiting junior players from the Private school sector .

The club mentality in RU is nowhere near that of RL with many supporters been more or less transient - Sale fans were recently threatening to follow Leeds Carnegie next season should they get relegated - I could not foresee a situation where I would become a Wigan fan if the same fate befell Warrington .

The youth structure in RL is well ahead of many other sports, definitely ahead of football. RU junior clubs struggle sometimes because most of the kids are at private schools which take their rugby very seriously and teachers put pressure on them to prioritise school over club. Being a leading 1st XV rugby union player for your school has its advantages when prefectships are handed out and UCAS references are needed.

you live in a different world to me, i played RU for 22 years, yes i briefly went to a public school, but my son who goes to a state school plays rugby union (u10's) and the club infa structure is way ahead of RL. YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO TO A PUBLIC SCHOOL TO PLAY RUGBY UNION! the club that my son plays at is more working class than warrington ever could be. it is niaive to believe all these class issues have as much to play in thing as they used to do. i am a loyal wire fan and have been for over 30 years however this belief that RU is an
elitist sport played by the rich and afluent is poppycock!

Just to reinforce the 'YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO TO A PUBLIC SCHOOL TO PLAY RUGBY UNION!

Lymm RUFC Under 17s have just become North of England Champions with a group of guys from state schools/colleges from across Warrington and are now through to the National semi finals.

A good news story for Rugby in Warrington if nothing else!

Union is just an inferior game, too many rules ,too many penalties , not enough tries, too many imported players at the highest level , poor points scoring system 5 for a try , 3 for a drop and 3 for a pen takes away the need for scoring tries which imo is the whole aim of the game, put the ball over the whitewash !
Thats why it's turned into YAWNION |

You know originally the "try" was simply to earn a "try at goal" and was not rewarded by points in its own right*.


[size*On further research a try was awarded with 1 point. [/size

OK - then why is the percentage of top level RU players from the private education sector still so high - 80 % of the current England squad are taken from a sector of society which constitutes less than 7% of the overall population -and if player development is so good in RU why are the RFU - which represent a country with more RU players then anywhere else in the World still scrambling around struggling to get a decent team together to the extent that any decent SA or Kiwi playing in the GP who qualifys for residency seems to get touted for the England side - also if you believe the rather ludicrous assertion that RU is not an elitist sport( The official Sale website even boasts on it`s home page how many of their supporters are Company Directors) try talking to the working-class Ben Cohen who was recently reciting on Radio 5 what a struggle it was for himself to break into the sport due to his background .
Incidentally my late Father was an ex-Capt of Warrington RU and my uncle played for Broughton Park prior to sigining to a RL club and going onto rep hoonours ...

RU has turned itself over the last 30+ years into a sport that is based around goal kicking, purely and simply because of the 3 points for a goal rule. Occassionally an international RU team comes along which tries to run & entertain, usually this team is Fiji or sometimes France but apart from that rarely do you see the emphasis on entertaining outweighing the fear of losing you see in England now.

Interestingly on Radio 5's Fighting Talk a few weeks back the question was asked "What sporting team is in real trouble of collapse at the moment" or something similar. Martin Bayfield (ex England RU forward for younger readers) answered that Australian International RU is under serious threat from RL, Cricket & Aussie Rules - seemingly not all in the RU garden is as rosy as some would make out...

Yeah, well you rugger buggers would say that.

Much of that would still hold if you replaced RU with cricket.

I really don't think we are on safe ground basking in the schadenfreuden of potential Australian international RU demise with our international setup in RL. And of course we should remember the Cook Cup event at Twickenham in November last year sported a capacity attendance of 82,000.

Also the introduction of the 5pt try in 1992 seems to sit at odds with your 30+ year comment.

Out of interest I understand the fact that the majority of top level RU players may come from the private education sector, what I don't understand is why that is such a problem necessarily?

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of world quality 100m sprinters are black and that the vast majority of premiership footballers come from humble origins, not that it matters in my view. There doesn't need to be parity.