On Sky Anytime there is a debate between Stevo and Barnes....

One side puts educated points across

Another side is a old duffer who talks rubbish and tries to be funny.

Who's who???

Thought Stevo was excellent on this. The line about paying tax was great. Get that investigated HMRC!

A very short debate I imagine.

Rugby League is great, Rugby Union is crap.

Debate over.

I think Laurie Daly summed it up perfectly:

"Rugby League is a simple game played by simple people; Rugby Union is a complex game, played by w@nkers."

Debate over.

shandy drinkers vs bitter drinkers, nuff said

Both are better than the game played with that funny shaped ball with teams of 11 ballerinas!!!

Sounds like a mass debate...

The problem rugby union has got is that in its efforts to make the game more entertaining, they have the same debate the league clubs had a hundred years ago. It goes like this:
"Rupert, if we want to speed up the ruck, what a spiffing idea it would be if the tackler replicated it by just heeling it backwards.'
'I say, Jeremy, how super, and to keep the game even, we could limit each side to say, (counts fingers on one hand) six heel-backs."
"Hurrah!" everyone shouts.
"Hang on, old bean, that sounds like that peasants game, you know, the one where people have always been paid."
The room turns sulky.
"Damn those northern monkeys."
"It's okay, Sebastian, daddy is very high up in the tax office, and the border agency, and so we'll make sure those commoners don't get their way."
"Hurrah!"

Played both codes and i can easily say league is physically harder, more entertaining to watch and being a outside back a million times more enjoyable to play. Only difference is the RFU runs there code better than the RFL, but just because they have all the money does not mean its in any way better. However both are better than watching 11 overpaid girls fall over a football for no reason.

Is Rupert from Castleford by any chance?

Agree completely

I, for once, really enjoyed Stevo being TV during this interview. I think its about time folk got on TV and started lambasting Union for pinching our ideas and generally being very boring to watch.

The RFL trying to spread the game into new regions at grassroots level is great news and long should they continue, but what really annoys me is this apologist attitude that comes along with it. Its like we should all have to feel embarrassed and apologetic about being a northern based sport and for falling behind the might of the Union PR machine. I'm all for expansion (if done in the correct manner), its for the greater good of the game, but that doesn't mean forget who we are. And, it doesn't mean we can't stand up in public and say "Do you know what Jonny Twickers? You're bloody boring!" That would command more of the publics respect than "The percentage of participation rates at grassroots level across the home counties continues to excel at increasing rates blah blah corporate balls" Basically you got a hand full of kids from different ethnicities in Brixton to play 9's once for ten minutes in some school or other and took a photo and very quietly and politely asked a broadsheet to say we're a success, while they ignore us and continue with boring column inch after boring column inch about that boring game that is meant to be like chess in comparison to our one dimensional game. apparently.

Rant over. To conclude. Well done Stevo. What Laurie Daly said.

I like them both. Brought up on Union, the game we played as kids. A bit different in Wales than Scotland or England i'll grant.
Due to the ridiculous media (non)coverage, and downright apartheid by the hierarchy of the country, (as brilliantly pointed out in David Hinchcliffe's book),
we never really saw, or understood much about, league. Hence the distaste every time League 'stole' our stars.
It was only since moving up North that I got a proper taste of what league is, and why RL followers dismiss union so quickly.
For me, it retains the football element from where the game of rugby evolved, and as such should only be compared in the same way as, say, the 3 forms of cricket.
As a spectator sport, League is more than likely preferable to the newbie. Also, League, altho' terribly run, is the more innovative, and union does pick up and run with leagues successes.

I didn't see/hear the debate.