I have got nothing good to say about Union at all, awful to watch, awful supporters. Cannot see the attraction at all.

Come on... Get off the fence...

You can't generalise like that and to say "the great history of our game has been based on bringing through players from union" which is a joke. They make up a small percentage of those who have played the game. Unless of course you want to start saying the likes of Shaun Edwards was ex-union because he played it at schoolboy level.

My son plays Union and now he is 17 an the rules are full union rules he can't wait to go to Uni to try and find an RL side to play for. The reason for this is he is a back and Union is a forward dominated game. We have friends at the club who wax lyrical about rucks, mauls and line outs being very skilful but if you are stuck out on the wing as the ball gets taken beck into the forwards time and time again you start to get a bit fed up!



What Thomas has done in the union game may be legendary there but given he only came to league well past his sell by date it means nothing here. Now Jonathan Davies has far more kudos and deserves far more respect in league circles than Thomas because Davies became an excellent league player in part because he came here in his prime not when he was due to retire.

Odd that the Scots watch an English Establishment game... Wonder why they never went down the RL route. Well i have ordered the Tony Collins book, so i should know more after that.

Not really, most south walians are English by decent having moved there for work in the pits and steel works. Until the law changed, not many, as a percentage, spoke Welsh. North wales, where my family are from, is very different. All my family have Welsh as a first language.

The Scots are well..... Scottish!! Thought they would have switched just as readily as us, if only to cock-a-snook at the English. But as i say, i don't know enough to know the reason why

And that's middle to upper class is it?

I think when we split up from union we very nearly had Wales in RL,union then decided to turn their backs on Welsh players getting paid so this stopped them coming from the dark side I think.( I am sure if I am incorrect somebody will put this right but this is what I have been told).

Whats that got to do with the price of cheese?

It is very much the establishment game in Scotland as well. It's the same type of people that are in the Scottish Conservatives. Union is popular in the private schools there and taken seriously at their universities like St Andrews, Edinburgh etc, the typical Scottish lawyer or accountant will be into union.

But the average working class Scot who likes beer and fried Mars bars will say rugby's a game for rich poofters.

In Wales however as other posters have pointed out, it is very much the game of the working classes.

Ireland is an interesting one, one of my flatmates is Irish, she reckons that when she was growing up, rugby union was viewed with suspicion in the Republic, the real sports there were hurling, Gaelic football and football, rugby was always associated with being the game the colonial English brought. But there has been a definite change in the last 10 years with union growing in popularity thanks to the emergence of high profile players like Brian O'Driscoll, Ronan O'Gara etc, and it is definitely more accepted as a mainstream sport.

Wigan Peer wrote:Odd that the Scots watch an English Establishment game... Wonder why they never went down the RL route. Well i have ordered the Tony Collins book, so i should know more after that scotlandrl.com/index.php Scottish rugby union is very much split into 2 catagories. 1. The FP (former pupil) clubs with are by and large based in the central belt (Edinburgh and Glasgow) and north and are more or less considered middle class . 2. The Border clubs from the mill towns like Hawick , Gala , Kelso , Selkirk , Langholm etc. These are very much working class clubs where most of the Scottish players who took up Rugby League originated from . Regards , EW PS dont knock the fried mars bar until you have tried it (i haven't)

Wigan Peer wrote:Odd that the Scots watch an English Establishment game... Wonder why they never went down the RL route. Well i have ordered the Tony Collins book, so i should know more after that scotlandrl.com/index.php Scottish rugby union is very much split into 2 catagories. 1. The FP (former pupil) clubs with are by and large based in the central belt (Edinburgh and Glasgow) and north and are more or less considered middle class . 2. The Border clubs from the mill towns like Hawick , Gala , Kelso , Selkirk , Langholm etc. These are very much working class clubs where most of the Scottish players who took up Rugby League originated from . Regards , EW PS dont knock the fried mars bar until you have tried it (i haven't)