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The League Media

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Hugh Jarse

Rocky Elsom (76)
Staff member
No problems with your words or length of your posts @mxyzptik.

The biggest problem is the spelling of your avatar, let alone pronounce it.
If it was allowable in Scrabble, it would be worth a decent score on a triple word tile.:)
 

mxyzptlk

Colin Windon (37)
The biggest problem is the spelling of your avatar, let alone pronounce it.
If it was allowable in Scrabble, it would be worth a decent score on a triple word tile.:)
Purposely chosen because it's never taken on any board. And I liked the character in Superman comics when I was a kid. (But proper names aren't allowed in Scrabble, right?)
 

MrTabua

Larry Dwyer (12)
I never knew "Mxyzptlk" was a comic book villian!

I should have steered away from those books I've been reading and stuck to the graphic novels :)
 

MrTabua

Larry Dwyer (12)
There was an interesting article in today's SMH about league in Fiji.

Possibly the most pertinent detail was that the writer was on an all expenses trip courtesy of the NRL.

A Rio Gold Medal would be fantastic for rugby in Fiji.
 

Omar Comin'

Chilla Wilson (44)
There was an interesting article in today's SMH about league in Fiji.

Possibly the most pertinent detail was that the writer was on an all expenses trip courtesy of the NRL.

A Rio Gold Medal would be fantastic for rugby in Fiji.


Leagues push into the islands has to be of concern. In rugby league Fijian and Samoan players have no trouble playing in the NRL but still representing Fiji or Samoa. And those teams get more opportunities to play on the big stage against the likes of the Kiwis and Kangaroos. For these reasons they're improving. Samoa just did very well in the league Four Nations.

On the other hand Super Rugby is virtually a closed shop to islanders (unless they represent the Wallabies or All Blacks), and the national teams pretty much only play big test matches in Europe (middle of the night) and at the world cup.
 

Pfitzy

George Gregan (70)
Leagues push into the islands has to be of concern. In rugby league Fijian and Samoan players have no trouble playing in the NRL but still representing Fiji or Samoa.

Or the best of them get cherry picked for the Kangaroos/Kiwis.

It doesn't concern me because the NRL can't sustain any meaningful form of competition outside itself. Bigger contracts are available in rugby, and more exposure.

Some will go to league, but league isn't EVER going to have an Olympic presence, which is where the prestige comes from. The majority will continue to look up to guys like Serevi, for example, and play rugby
 

Omar Comin'

Chilla Wilson (44)
Or the best of them get cherry picked for the Kangaroos/Kiwis.

It doesn't concern me because the NRL can't sustain any meaningful form of competition outside itself. Bigger contracts are available in rugby, and more exposure.

Some will go to league, but league isn't EVER going to have an Olympic presence, which is where the prestige comes from. The majority will continue to look up to guys like Serevi, for example, and play rugby

They do, but the ones that aren't quite at that level can play for Fiji or Samoa without having their NRL contracts at risk. And the ones that do represent Australia or New Zealand can switch their allegiance once they're no longer being selected for the big two.

More exposure in a global sense yes, but I doubt the Top 14 or the Aviva Premiership (the primary options for top islander talent) have anywhere near the exposure on the islands that the NRL does. The former are played in the middle of the night. Plus I'm sure most kids that grow up on the islands would rather play in Australia or New Zealand, where they are close to their family, than in Europe.

Olympics has plenty of prestige but the 7's players for Fiji get paid chicken feed. In recent times a few of their players have left to play professional rugby in Sri Lanka of all places! Money talks.
 

Polynesian Warriors

Frank Nicholson (4)
They do, but the ones that aren't quite at that level can play for Fiji or Samoa without having their NRL contracts at risk. And the ones that do represent Australia or New Zealand can switch their allegiance once they're no longer being selected for the big two.

More exposure in a global sense yes, but I doubt the Top 14 or the Aviva Premiership (the primary options for top islander talent) have anywhere near the exposure on the islands that the NRL does. The former are played in the middle of the night. Plus I'm sure most kids that grow up on the islands would rather play in Australia or New Zealand, where they are close to their family, than in Europe.

Olympics has plenty of prestige but the 7's players for Fiji get paid chicken feed. In recent times a few of their players have left to play professional rugby in Sri Lanka of all places! Money talks.

Don't get fool by the league media, the Pacific Islands as far as rugby is concern is in safe hands. Theres a lot of exposures in the Pacific Islands with professional competitions from all over the world in the local papers, news and even the odd games here and there from Europe and Japan on Sky Pacific. Rugby from RWC, super rugby, test matches, world sevens, Olympics & Commonwealth games and all local rugby far out weights any rugby league products or international games. Rugby league still has a long way to go before it can even challenge soccer in the countries mention.
 

mxyzptlk

Colin Windon (37)
Another interesting article in SMH about Ben T'eo (albeit written by a rugby scribe) and his views re Rugby v League, the international aspect of Rugby, leaguies switching codes and the fact nobody in the NH has heard of Johnathan Thurston.

http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/u...e-is-serious-about-rugby-20141122-11qz4v.html

It sounds like even he was surprised at the breadth and depth of rugby outside of Australia. Makes you wonder if that's a prevalent blind spot among leaguies down under; that couldn't be the case in New Zealand and the UK.
 

Lindommer

Steve Williams (59)
Staff member
Leaguies don't know their code isn't the be all and end all, well I never....., what's the world coming to? Todd Carney's heroic endeavours don't matter a fuck to those outside Goulburn and the Daily Telegraph? Something should be done about this, call in someone from News Limited.

Talk about a big fish in a small pond.....
 

mxyzptlk

Colin Windon (37)
Leaguies don't know their code isn't the be all and end all...

Talk about a big fish in a small pond...
It reminds me a lot of the provincial way people see the NFL here in the States, except some people outside of the States actually know who the best players in the NFL are.

But that raises a question: American football and rugby league have both been professionalized for about the same length of time. The USA (along with Canada) are big enough to support a pretty healthy league with a global presence, but without really having to expand teams to global markets (at least in their premier competition -- the London Blitz were never going to play the New England Patriots in league competition).

But in that 100+ years, rugby league hasn't really expanded beyond Sydney, a couple places in Queensland, Auckland, and a corridor in northern England. League even struggles in London. Why is that? Did professional league even try to expand to other amateur rugby-playing markets in the 50's, or the 70's, or at any other time, and just fail? Or did they just not try to expand? (Leave WWII France out of it, that's a special circumstance and doesn't pertain to other decades league could have expanded but didn't.)

If league did try to expand and it didn't work, why? What about the sport didn't capture local athletes/audiences imaginations?
 

kandos

Frank Nicholson (4)
... Did professional league even try to expand to other amateur rugby-playing markets in the 50's, or the 70's, or at any other time, and just fail? Or did they just not try to expand? ...
If league did try to expand and it didn't work, why? What about the sport didn't capture local athletes/audiences imaginations?
Firstly, in my view, the word 'professional' was a misnomer, at least in England. My home city (Hull) is a League stronghold. I've known many of the players from Hull KR and to a man all of them had day jobs; they trained on an evening, usually twice a week with a game on a weekend for which they were paid a win / lose payment that was less than a weekly wage. The irony is that the only players who made any money were usually Union imports from Wales. Full time only, so 'professional', came about with Wigan in the late 80's early 90's and Murdoch's TV money made it possible to go professional. And below Superleague there are still players who are only semi-pro.

As for the game's expansion, the RL has made a hash of it by not trying hard enough or listened to false promises and got ripped off like a bunch of amateurs. However, in England, whenever possible, the RFU has used its influence to make life as difficult as possible. League wasn't allowed in the Armed Forces; once you got to 18 if I remember, if you played League as an amateur (the vast majority who played the game), you wasn't allowed to play Union.This nonsense only stopped when the RFU was hauled over the coals in Parliament and 1995 came along. Plus, many southerners view the north of England as a foreign country. And, more people prefer Union.

The IRB have been much more successful in pushing the game. Both Rugby codes are not that big in the UK despite what anyone else says. It's overwhelmingly soccer that has huge resources. Internationally, the only place where League is a big deal is Sydney and other parts of east coast Australia. The power in the game is the NRL and it's apparent they're not that interested in expansion. It's been tried in London, Wales and other places but it's never really worked. There's an amateur set-up around the UK that was never there before, but it's no big deal.
 

mxyzptlk

Colin Windon (37)
Firstly, in my view, the word 'professional' was a misnomer, at least in England...
Did that same sort of semi-pro thing go on in Australia until the 1990's?

I'd forgotten about the RFU icing out players who played different codes. Did that only happen in England? I can't imagine the ARU willing to risk shutting out code-hoppers.
 

kandos

Frank Nicholson (4)
Did that same sort of semi-pro thing go on in Australia until the 1990's?

I'd forgotten about the RFU icing out players who played different codes. Did that only happen in England? I can't imagine the ARU willing to risk shutting out code-hoppers.
I was in Aus in 2002 and bought George Piggins biog. He said when he played it was definitely semi pro. So, i'm assuming most of the players were the same.

The system in Australia's always been that different to England. Example: Kevin Ryan was a dual code international. He also became a barrister amongst other roles. That would never have happened in England. People from professions never played League or Soccer and still don't.

League's been the author of its own problems, but the real reason the game came about in the first place was not professionalism, but the British 'class' system to keep the working classes from dominating the 'establishment's' game. They used broken time payments as an excuse, yet turned a blind eye to it elsewhere. You could be a pro golfer, cricketer etc and play Union.

1995 changed all that and there's free movement between the codes since. Union has benefited greatly from it, League's regressed. The country that's suffered the most from the creation of League is Australia. If there was still one code (Union) I think Australia would dominate the game.

The Poms at Twickers have a lot to answer for. One final example: Welshman eventually finds a pub in Sheffield to catch a game between England and France. Surreal experience for him when the punters were cheering for the French to win. Methinks the same will happen on Saturday.
 

mxyzptlk

Colin Windon (37)
So in short, league in both Aus and Pomland promoted itself as being pro but was functionally semi-pro for most of that time. Not a good business move.

I understand the fossilized class differences between codes in England, but from what I can tell that's shifting (and Manchester now rivals London for wealthiest people in the country -- from what I understand, economically, the north is doing better today than just about ever). I've also seen current players talking about how they never really had to deal with those differences when they were coming up -- I wish I could remember who it was, but one of those times was a joint interview with a league player from Salford and I think a player from Sale, but that was 3 or 4 years ago. There's plenty of fluidity between codes in England today, but it's almost all in one direction. You see some league players go to union and return, like Joel Tomkins, but I don't know of anyone today who starts in union and then cuts to league. (Tomkins had a pretty successful return to Wigan -- I'd be curious if he credits union for developing him in any way that served his league game.)

You hear about those class differences between codes in Australia, but my sense is they hold even less there, especially when league players are second to AFL players for public profile. So I think the criticism there stands -- for a code that does as well in Australia as it does, it's a bit rich for its millionaire former players to call themselves working class, and they missed a trick by waiting until union ate their world-wide lunch to concern themselves with growing the global game.

I'm in/from the USA, so I don't have much of a handle on how the class differences might work in the rest of the world. It's a growing game here, and maybe more prominent in east coast private schools, but it's also more of a public game on the west coast. The biggest barrier is availability, not economic bracket. (It's a perfect game for the Upper Midwest, and if it ever takes root there, don't be surprised if they start providing a lot of the national players.) I imagine it's a similar story in Canada, although they do a much better job at organizing the game at a national level than the USA.

I know for years union was a working class game in Wales, a game miners played -- that's even in folk songs. And then South Africa has its own historical issues, but it's hardly a one-class game there anymore, and they don't seem particularly interested in league. I doubt league could be introduced there via an appeal to the non-Afrikaner population.

I lived in Ireland for a few years (where I first got into rugby), and to this day I'm still not sure where the public stands on the game, at least in terms of class. It's probably the fourth game in Ireland, with Gaelic football, hurling and soccer ahead of them. But you'd still see the pubs and stands full during national games, and I don't recall any class-based retribution against any code (but I could have missed it). If the Irish are playing in a sport, the Irish will get behind them. At the same time, it's similar enough to Gaelic football that there's some cross-over in support (and players), and I have yet to see Irish supporters talking down any other Irish team because it wasn't their code of choice.

The only sort of problem I've seen in Ireland is some petulance by people who it seems were either bullied or felt otherwise threatened by rugby players in school and use that as an excuse to talk down the code. Ken Early from the Irish Times does that all the time on the Second Captains podcast -- knows nothing about the sport despite having to comment on it on occasion, and proudly foregrounds that. He went to the Ireland - South Africa game, and spent most of the time drinking beer with some conference-goers he went with and not watching the game, then complained about how it's too hard compared to soccer. He seems to actively work to get names and details wrong. But that could be just because Ken Early likes to be a prick, not because of any inherent class-based differences.

Rugby is also the one sport that binds the Ulster to the rest of the provinces on the international level -- in rugby terms, they're more unified than Queensland and NSW, and they fought a civil war.
 

MrTabua

Larry Dwyer (12)
"The Union Game" by Sean Smith is a great read on the subject of class and the reasons for the expansion of rugby around the world.

The accompanying BBC documentary has episodes on Britain, France, South Africa/New Zealand and professional rugby, including Oz.
 

mxyzptlk

Colin Windon (37)
"The Union Game" by Sean Smith is a great read on the subject of class and the reasons for the expansion of rugby around the world.

The accompanying BBC documentary has episodes on Britain, France, South Africa/New Zealand and professional rugby, including Oz.

Thanks for the tip!
 
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