As someone who is completely neutral on Rugby and who actively thinks that Rugby League is silly, it has long been a point of confusion for me as to why the two codes simply just don't give up and reunify. One code of Rugby seems sufficient but two looks very silly.
Once upon a time in the olden days, the football clubs who didn't want to play the kicking only game but did want to play the carry and kick game, stayed away from the formation of the Football Association. They would eventually all solidify their rules set on the carry and kick game from the Rugby School and as such called themselves the Rugby Football Union. The carry and kick game started as one unified game and would continue that way from the 1860s to the 1890s.
Rugby League is basically the result of two semi-connected schisms in the north of England in 1895 and in Australia in 1907. At the heart of the matter was a pay dispute (namely that players wanted to be paid for their displaced time) but the Rugby Football Union wanted the game to remain amateur. Given the space and time of more than a century, I would expect that the two sets of rules would diverge wildly but they do not.
Both codes have long been at the point where they are fractured to the detriment of both of them. When it comes to international Rugby League, most of the world doesn't even care. Why bother? Of the 16 Rugby League World Cups, Australia has won 12. Of the 32 finalists of those 16 Rugby League World Cups just 3 have not been either Australia, New Zealand or Great Britain/England. The really small nations such as Fiji, Samoa and Tonga like to show up at the Rugby League World Cup but really they are just made up of ex-pat players in Australia, New Zealand or Great Britain/England.
The really big representative Rugby League competition is the State of Origin Series between NSW and Queensland. This is because of that same root cause, that they only meaningful international matches are between Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain/England, with the pacific island nations looking in from the outside.
International Rugby on the other hand, has at its core the Six Nations of England, Wales, Scotland, a combined Ireland, France, and Italy; with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Japan, and a host of secondary nations such as Namibia, Georgia, Portugal, Romania et cetera. Comparing the two lists, everyone who is represented at international level in Rugby League, also has a viable Rugby team; for small nations such as Samoa and Tonga which both have populations smaller than the local government area that I live, the amount of overlap between the two competitions is surely ridiculous.
However, when it comes to Rugby, apart from international rugby, the Rugby Union in the southern hemisphere is a complete basket case and in the northern hemisphere is is fractured in many many ways. The entirety of Super Rugby in the South Pacific, is now just Auckland, Waikato, Wellington, Christchurch, Otago, NSW, QLD, Canberra, Victoria, WA, Fiji and Moana Pasifika. The Seven clubs of South Africa left Super Rugby in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled season and have subsequently joined what used to be called the Celtic League to form the United Rugby Championship, which now means that a Warriors v Stormers match has the unlikely away distance of more than 13,000km. I do not know for how long, ten thousand kilometer away trips for South African teams on a regular basis, or vice versa, is viable.
As for the problem of the two codes of club rugby, one will always be the poor cousin of the other. Club Rugby in Australia is a joke. The NRL (National Rugby League) competition in Australia is a very massive thing. Likewise in New Zealand, the NZRL is a joke but the National Provincial Championship for Rugby is massive. Rugby League in England at club level is very big and club Rugby sort of exists in a different space but is much smaller in terms of team numbers.
In Australia, things like the Shute Shield in NSW, and Queensland's Premier Rugby and Country Rugby could logically be rolled into the state rugby league championships under whatever the new régime would be. It probably makes sense that Warringah and Randwick should be playing against the Newtown Jets and the North Sydney Bears, as that seems to be about the level of skill which is equivalent.
Likewise, it also makes some kind of sense to me that the existing Super Rugby should exist alongside State of Origin as different pathways to go. Probably Super Rugby exists as a weird Champions League type thing, since players already move between the two codes now. At domestic club level, having only a single competition structure makes all kinds of sense.
At a national level, I do realise that people might feel some kind of loss but really apart from the Kangaroos whose cache has been massively devalued by virtue of never really having any serious competition, a single rugby world cup was always and still is the most sensible idea.
It seems to me from a logical point of view, that the duplication of two codes of rugby is unnecessary. Melding them back into one thing would be an incredibly complicated process but not insurmountable. Really apart from the enmeshing of club rugby and a bit of cleanup to do with provincial rugby, I see no reason why two codes should exist.
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