In the now great tradition of Australian Rugby wandering why it is always the ugly sister at the ball, there have been a number of pieces written in The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald trying to answer the question. The answer turns out to be pretty obvious to anyone who follows sport in Australia and that is that Football, Australian Rules, and Rugby League are the ball sports of the ordinary common people and Rugby is the posh peoples' sport. Rah-Rah can not really escape its image of not wanting to dirty its hands by ignoring the oiks because at almost every level of the game, Rah-Rah wants to ignore the oiks.
Curiously, the ABC's reply is the most honest:
It simply illustrated there is a long-standing perception of Australian rugby union that it is the domain of the private schoolboy.
Galloway and others cannot be blamed if they genuinely feel this way, given the substantial number of Wallabies players and rugby administrators — present and past — who went to private schools.
Among last year's Wallabies squad, almost three-quarters of players who were educated in Australia finished their schooling at private or independent institutions.
Of the 25 players named in the Australian Schools and Under 18s squad last September, only three completed year 12 at public schools.
- ABC News, 14th Jun 2023.
I am surprised that anyone is surprised by this.
Before I begin this, I have to lay my cards on the table and say that I think that Rugby League is a stupid game and that Rugby Union is only just a notch above it. I think that the rules of Rugby League have been mangled beyond the point of anything sensible for the purposes of being shown on television, and that it very much suffers as a result. The game mechanically does not reward possession, in that after a tackle count of six, a team must give the ball to the opposition. It got here after the rise of the NFL in the 1970s, with its four down count but did not include the NFL's provisions to restart the count if a team did something with that possession. Had Rugby League frozen the rules in 1966, it would have been (and was) a better game.
All that aside, I think that it is bonkers crazy that there are two kinds what is essentially the same game. The rugby codes exist because of the codification of football, when the carrying game and the kicking game separated. The kicking game formed the Football Association and the carrying game formed the Rugby Union, named after the school which supposedly legendarily had William Webb Ellis pick the ball up and run with it.
The Rugby Union and the Rugby League split further over a pay dispute, namely that players who wanted to be paid something for their efforts because having to train took away from their livelihoods, and the two games progressively diverged a bit. The really daft thing is that both games survived and continue to do so; to the detriment of each other.
I shall use the example of Australia here, since this illustrates the idiocy nicely.
At school level, whether or not a school plays Rugby League or Rugby Union, is mostly determined by a combination geographical location and economic fortune of the school. Public schools tend to play Rugby League more and private schools tend to play Rugby Union more; and together this is an excellent way of maintaining a de facto economic apartheid; which is already rampant in the school system in Australia.
At club level, amateur clubs tend to follow the same kind of geographical split. At professional club level, the League clubs who are mostly backed by multi-million dollar gambling hubs, are able to attract money from everywhere; including sponsorship and TV rights. Club Rugby is amazingly anaemic.
At state level, a weird thing has happened. The Rugby League has correctly identified that limited supply keeps the price and interest up; and so there are three state games per year. There are only two states who play at state level because the rest of the country outside of New South Wales and Queensland struggles to care about throwball at all. The Rugby Union though, kind of invented its own multi-national provincial "club" system, and made use of the fact that countries like New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, and the island nations of the Pacific, still have some latent need for the game below international level.
At international level, Rugby League struggles to maintain any kind of relevance at all. As the engine room of professional Rugby League is New South Wales, then the only interest which can exist is if anyone can beat Australia. This is ironic given the fact that Australians mostly don't care an iota about the Kangaroos. The only other nation which can consistently put up a fight against the Kangaroos is the New Zealand and yet again, the Kiwis are but a poor attendant and sideshow to the All-Blacks.
The Rugby World Cup is genuinely cared about by more than just a few countries. Admittedly the Rugby World Champions are only ever likely to be one of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, England, maybe France, and with a very long shot Wales; but the point is that at international level, The Rugby World Cup is properly a thing. The Rugby League World Cup is almost a joke, even to the people who are in it.
Rugby League in New Zealand is almost like the second-chance draw for prizes in a lottery. New Zealand very very much cares about Rugby but Rugby League is the sport for the lads who weren't quite good enough. New Zealand would likely survive excellently well if Rugby League were not a thing. If the Kiwis simply disappeared, who would care? Who would know? The All-Blacks on the other hand are a source of national pride, and almost national identity. If the All-Blacks lose a Bledisloe Cup series, it almost warrants a Royal Commission; and for the perpetrators to be hung, drawn, quartered, and the parts dragged through the streets. At very least, everyone in a losing Bledisloe Cup series should be led into a field and hit with sticks.
If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then there would not be two kinds of Rugby. There just isn't any obvious point to two. Roll the clubs into some kind of tiered system and have them rated against each other. Maybe play some kind of Cup competition. It is likely that a club like Randwick would not do well against South Sydney, but they might find that they are a good match for Newtown.
At state level, the provincial competition is already the logical pathway towards the national side in many countries. I'd keep it. Ironically I'd also keep the three State of Origin matches because they have comprehensively proved their worth.
At national level, duplication is stupid. The only nations where there is any differentiation is Australia and New Zealand and to be honest, the Kangaroos and Kiwis, are but pathetic shadows of the Wallabies and All-Blacks. I do not think that any other country, including England, would particularly care or even notice that the two codes merged at national level. I could throw around words like 'synergy' and 'efficiency' but when you are talking about the tribal differences between poshball and oikball, those things tend not to matter so much. If this was an industry with two similar products, then management looking to maximise profit, would have merged the two codes a long time ago. The perception of difference is only on the outside as internally, both players, coaches, and indeed corporate managers have moved between the two without any cares about with the posh people or oiks think.
Otherwise, the state split of New South Wales and Queensland with throwball and the other states playing Australian Rules football is fine. This is a weird weird intractable split. However, the split between two kinds of rugby is dafter than a cat playing shuffleboard with a scrubbing brush on the Titanic. I do not understand what that metaphor means, just like I do not understand why there needs to be two kinds of rugby.
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