In Australia rugby union is an exclusive game whereas in NZ and the RSA it is inclusive. The trick is to change that in Oz.
Somebody in the thread mentioned elitism in our sport. Excuse me if I give it an historical perspective.
Rugby was exclusive at first. Englishmen who went to private shools (which the Poms call public schools) started up clubs to play the footie game they had played in their schooldays. The game played at the Rugby School emerged as the strongest and it adopted some of the rules used in other schools. Then there was the schism between what we call soccer in Oz, and rugby, which we need not go into here.
In the later parts of the 19th century the rugby toffs in the south became uneasy because the working class northern unions of England were dominating results. They didn't like the ruffians being able to get payments, or perks, either.
In 1893 the Rugby Union voted down a proposal to permit broken time payments to players who lost work after being injured playing rugby; so the northerners resolved to break away to form their own union. They did so two years later and the toffs were ecstatic to see the grubby workers go; they wanted to preserve their genteel middle class game.
Thus the Rugby League was born though it didn't take that name until later.
This was an historic example of exclusivity. As the game spread with various success to other parts of the empire, men in South Africa and New Zealand, regardless of class, took to the union game like ducks to water. To them the sport was inclusive.
This was not the case in Australia; the "Aussie Rules" game, as some of us call it now, grabbed the interest of the working man, especially in Victoria, and rugby as a code of football in Oz nearly died out. Sydney University had played the game internally in the 1860s and some other clubs started up to give them a match. As the Sydney suburbs expanded, so did the number of clubs and the rugby union sport took hold.
In the new century came the rugby league which poached most of the Wallaby team, then came WWI, when rugby union was disbanded and rugby union players and officials joined up to fight. The rugby league kept going and this helped them to establish their sport. The existence of rugby union became fragile once more and it nearly expired again, particularly in Queensland, where it didn't emerge again until 1928.
It was the private schools that kept the game going around WWI and it was incongruous that the two big Sydney Catholic rugby schools, Riverview (Jesuits) and St. Josephs (Marist Brothers), played a leading role. The irony was that the anti-war Church, heavily influenced by Irish clergy, was the champion of working men who gravitated to the rugby league game.
Private schools remain a solid base for our sport. Without them it would be just a novelty activity now.
We would all like our sport become inclusive - to be played more at state schools and to have greater numbers coming through the junior club system. Let's thumb our noses at elitism by all means, but let's not knock private school rugby; it's a mainstay of our sport.
