anyway, back on the union v league debate, having played union for over 20 years and watched league foe over 30 years. i consider them to be totally different games, both with good and bad aspects to them. to dismiss union as pants tells me people have never played the game.

Union is naff though, I played 5 years of it at school, alongside a couple guys who are playing top flight RU now. I was pretty much a utility player, played everywhere except hooker and the half backs at some point.

That union, what is that union?

Union is too slow, stop start stop start kick pile on stop start kick stop pile on kick. That pretty much sums up 80 mins of a union game... Yawn!

Union is second rate for many reasons. The only reason union is where it is, is due to better publicity, and it's played by southerners who have links to London who Overtime have run the media. In opposition RL is a working class northern sport. There's no comparison.

to be honest most rugby league fans just have a knee jerk reaction when union is mentioned, they respond as they think they are 'supposed' to respond

its like if you grow up a Rangers fan you are taught as a kid how to respond at the mention of Celtic

far too few people think for themselves, if you actually ask blokes like Mike Nicholas, John Bevan, Jonathan Davies, Allan Bateman etc, who have been there and done it at the top of both sports, they won't come out with these stupid responses about union, but you will hear it from rugby league plebs on the terraces

Some interesting comments and comparison from none other than Stuart Barnes!
rlStuart Barnes piece in the Sydney Morning Heraldrl
I can see where he's coming from when he talks about the very best Union, but as he also admits, "the best union is admittedly a rarity".

I am coaching both RU and RL at the moment and I can categorically state that the core skill levels in RU are massively behind those shown by juniors and youths in RL.

Interesting article that, I take his point about Union being a far more intelligent game but League still wins hands down for me.

He seems to begrudgingly admire the skill level of the players, but even the most ardent Union fan couldn't fail to be impressed by Origin. He should have taken his mate Stephen Jones from The Times along to see what he thought.

I don't mind RU when it is played well but most of the time it is slow, too much kicking and not expansive enough or in other words it is usually crap.

Absolutely right. You can't use RU played in schools as a yardstick for how the game is played. There are differing scrummaging restrictions for various age groups, and it's the same with the lineout. The biggest problem in both games is the scrum, in RL it's laughable, I've even seen referees tell sides not to push. In RU the scrum takes far too long to set these days and players can get severely penalised if the opposition Prop has a better technique. As a result teams hunt penalties rather than tries and the game becomes stifled.

It's a poor version of RL.

The likes of Stuart Barnes and his ilk cannot see the difference in class because he doesn't want to see it,typical union hack.

I think a lot of the issues league fans have with union is the traditional class divide, and league's underdog status and mentality that goes with it.

The reality is they're different sports. I don't play any sport, but I don't watch union for the same reason I don't watch, for example, cricket. The odd time I have seen it, it hasn't appealled to me. Simple as that. Nothing to do with league.

I like League.

I don't like Union just like I don't like swimming, showjumping, snooker or motor racing.

I don't think I'm going to worry about it.