Union or League

What does each code have over the other? Which is better? Opinions please!!

Oh no

Let everyone enjoy their own Rugby code and lets not start other my Rugby code is better than your Rugby code debate.
Both Rugby codes have plus's and minus's.

Yes, please let's not have a thread comparing Union to watching paint dry. It's been done to death.

offload wrote:Yes, please let's not have a thread comparing Union to watching paint dry. It's been done to death.

league is better

zzzzz

I like both

Women's beach volleyball.

Tidily winks is a far more advanced Sport than both ....

Let's just unite in our happiness in what we have in both, no clownish knee-clutching and face-scrunching at a simple trip, no sissy padding etc.

They're both men's games, one is only slightly more manly than the other

played, coached both and been a trainer in league love them both equally.
One day league will be just ashorter version of 15 a side union, combined talents and resources,like test and one day cricket..

League for me is like sevens, only in sevens you don't throw a tantrum when you are tackled.

Doesn´t matter. We´re World Champions at both. Both good sports.

Biltong
The tackles in league hurt more,and I also reckon that shoulder charges should be allowed at the professional level of union.

Started watching more league recently. Got rid of sky so it's pretty much the only odd shaped balls i get to see apart from my own.

I don't like the fact that in league there's no contest for the ball. It's just five attacks then kick, five attacks then kick over and over and over again. I find it mind numbingly repetitive.

I found league far more fun to play but it's like watching paint dry these days from a spectator point of view.

There's very little competitive games out side the NRL and far too many soft tries and one sided games in SL. As Feckless says its very repetitve.

There's more competive games in 1 weekend of HEC rugby than the entire superleague season IMO.

I would like to see League grow in Ireland and in truth I'd be more likely to lace up my boots again if there was a league team up the road than freeze my b*llox off playing union again.....

Oh God Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

League & Union are seperate sports that just happened to be based on the same original code. Same as Soccer is too.

They have all changed and diversified over the decades and each has positives & negatives that their respective fans enjoy and find frustrating.

Let's leave it at that eh?

The are both excellent sports in my opinion. Sure they have their differences (obviously, they being different codes and all!) and if asked i will say without hesitation that Union is my prefered sport, but League is an excellent game too.

And Union owes a lot to league since the game went Professional. For proof read how many defence coaches in the Jeff, Rabo, Top14, S15 and Int game that have a League backround. And then pre professionalism in Union, Union aided League witha number of effective converts (and that goes Vice-Versa too)

I'd even go so far as to say that the contiue to inform eachother. You can see it in a one on one tackle in League when the defender targets the ball, the only time the really allow a contest in League for possession outside of kicks. Of course League players would have their own talents and instincts in this regard but you can see Union techniques in play too.

All in all, I enjoy both Codes and cannot tolerate the whitenoise of intercode biatching and amplified snobbery/chip-on-my-shoulder attitudes.

Enjoy your own game if you really dislike the other so much, noone forces you to watch either one. No really, play with yourself the rest of us do not care.

debaters1

The post says "Which is better? Opinions please!!".

So we are entitled to give our honest opinions thank you very much. If you cannot tolerate people preferring one over the other for whatever reason, then don't read the thread.

Carpe Diem wrote:Started watching more league recently. Got rid of sky so it's pretty much the only odd shaped balls i get to see apart from my own.

Waaaay too much information.
I always worry about those guys who spend a lot of time looking at their odd shaped balls.

I've never got into League cause I just don't see much of it, but I have watched the odd game on the BBC. For me that's like the men who enjoy the Women's Beach Volleyball - watch the eye candy and know feck all about the rules.

roddersm wrote:I found league far more fun to play but it's like watching paint dry these days from a spectator point of view.

There's very little competitive games out side the NRL and far too many soft tries and one sided games in SL. As Feckless says its very repetitve.

There's more competive games in 1 weekend of HEC rugby than the entire superleague season IMO.

I would like to see League grow in Ireland and in truth I'd be more likely to lace up my boots again if there was a league team up the road than freeze my b*llox off playing union again.....

I found league to be more knackering that's for sure! First time I played was when we were playing a lot of Union and thought I was pretty fit (for a lock / flanker anyway) and after about 10 minutes I felt like Only had the chance to play it a few more times after that but really did enjoy it. From a viewing standpoint I always prefer Union and agree that many SL games are one sided and I don't tend to watch them on a regular basis, although I have really enjoyed the 4 Nations so far and will be watching the final on Saturday.

Find when it comes to amateur games that RL was always better to watch than Union. Most amatuer union games tend not to have the skill levels required to produce fast free flowing games and become attritional forward dominated games where as will RL being simpler then it tends to produce better games on the eyes.

Would also be temped to play RL if there was a local team, where as not bothered about playing Union. However, no RL teams around here so chances are slim to nothing.

League is rarely shown here in the US. The 4 nations has been shown live, but not advertised. Only found out it was on by accident when I turned on the tv a week, or so, ago. I miss watching the AFL which is not shown here anymore. Now, that's a game for people who are bonkers.

I never really watched League growing up and never played it. At least until a friend of mine started playing for the old London Broncos about 10-15 years ago. Different game than Rugby and I don't look at them as being in competition, at least not any more.

One observation is that it seems to me the NRL matches are more interesting than Super League, but this is from a casual observer. Maybe its because I find the broadcasts to be better.

Feckless, I was clearly referring to a specific type of opinion regarding both the sports; ie the League is a workin' mans game for good honest workin people, Union is for Southern pansies or the League is for ken-ackers who dont like things being too complex.

I mean i can see the reason that people get annoyed at the 'wriggle' in league and dismiss the game out of hand as a result, but once you realise that said player is attempting to play on (win a penalty!) then you can see the parelled in Union when the Scrum half stands and points at hands in the ruck, whether there or not. Both can be annoying but both are integral to their respective codes.

It is the childish nonsense I don't like. I thought I made that fairly clear but next I shan't leave any doubt as to my meaning.

Sorry debaters, I was a bit snappy there alright.

No worries, not like I can grandstand and say that I've never been wrong on the Internet before.....

And I agree with you in that my favourite thing about Union is the almost constant contest for the ball. But I do appreciate the extra efficiency required in League derived from the 6 tackle rule. Also one of the reasons I like NFL too. But Union is King......

I've only ever been to one league game and that was when JD dropped two goals to beat England at Ninian Park....???

...Thank fully I've not been to some of the recent games

Is League a Northern thing or an English Northern thing?

Does Scotland have any League teams?

Is League a Northern thing or an English Northern thing?

Well, from where I'm sitting, Yorkshire and Lancashire are in the 'South', so I suppose it depends on your perspective.

I don't think the Scots play any League, but I could be wrong.

Good to hear sensible comments especially from Rodders and Feckless - I've played a lot more League than Union (being born and raised in dewsbur might have had something to do with that) and certainly my experience is that League is more physically demanding (at a good amateur level - I'm pretty sure both are equally hard at pro level).

Most of you, especially any Union second row and back row forwards would enjoy playing league because it is a more straightforward game - run, pass and flatten any opponents trying to do the same. These are generally why most of us got into rugby in the first place.

In most cases though I find Union a more entertaining game to watch because it is more multi-facetted and there is a far greater opportunity for the unexpected to happen.

Oh, and in response to Metal Tiger, RL is very much a northern English sport rather than a northern sport - As far as I recall from reading about the formation of the Northern Union (i.e. the precursor to the Rugby League), there was never serious discussion of the Scottish Union allying themselves, although it was a much closer thing with the Welsh (after all, they had similar issues to those in northern England with players who were working primarily as miners or factory workers who couldn't afford the time off from their day jobs to play rugby).

I've a question. Why is league so limited in popularity to certain places? For most of the history of the two games, league was professional and union was amateur. So surely league would have signed up the best players and had the better trained athletes and coaches and generally would have been better run? So how did union remain so popular through the amateur era? Surely it was of inferior quality to the professional rugby league?

Oh dear, now you've gone and done it Feckless.....

Feckless, if you've a couple of days to spare, post this question on the RL board.

SOME of the RL (just like SOME of the Union fans) have more chips on their shoulder than you would believe, so be prepared for many, many conspiracy theories (including HM Armed Forces, the Nazi's and the Vichy French) as to why RL is not played on a wider basis.

Pesonally I think, for the vast majority of people, it's whatever game you grow up with that dictates your future interests, and at the time of the breakaway folk didn't travel as much as they do nowadays and there was no TV to spread the gospel of League, so its coverage and thus popularity was limited.


Probably a very simplistic view, but it works for me.

TrailApe wrote:be prepared for many, many conspiracy theories (including HM Armed Forces, the Nazi's and the Vichy French) as to why RL is not played on a wider basis.

Sounds like the script to a new Indiana Jones movie. Indiana Jones and the Lost Rugby Code.

TrailApe
Your comment may be a bit simplistic, but you are probably quite close to the truth - simply, RL has struggled every time it has attempted to expand away from its traditional territory (i.e. a stretch of northern England with Hull in the east, through West Yorkshire and Lancashire to the Wirral inthe west plus a bit of the Cumbrian coast). It's even been difficult to establish solid teams in Sheffield (only about 30 miles form the heartland of the game) and Tyneside. A lack of coverage, at least until the 70s may have played a part, but there is little doubt that RL in England is traditionally quite a parochial game - to many of the fans it's none the worse for that because it promotes some ferocious local rivalries such as Hull v Hull KR, Castleford v Featherstone, St Helens v Wigan.

Even though it was always a professional sport, until Sky put money into Super League, there wasn't a huge amount of cash available - enough to tempt some of the Welsh RU players who otherwise were in relatively lowly paid jobs, but not sufficient to have much appeal to the southern English Union players (or even to kill off Union in places like Leeds) who were perhaps more affluent (often public school backgrounds, well paid jobs often arranged through contacts within the clubs and perhaps a touch of shamateurism in some cases).

Of course, had the Welsh decided to side with the Northern Union, the whole history of rugby could have been very different.

Thanks for the info. And what about Australia. Why's that the only country in which league is bigger than union? Has it always been that way over there?

Feckless Rogue wrote:I've a question. Why is league so limited in popularity to certain places? For most of the history of the two games, league was professional and union was amateur. So surely league would have signed up the best players and had the better trained athletes and coaches and generally would have been better run? So how did union remain so popular through the amateur era? Surely it was of inferior quality to the professional rugby league?

I have actually looked into this before and did quite a peice on this in the old 606. To keep it short and not pages and pages...

For pretty much most of the history of both games they were identical... Think how boxing has several different governing bodies... WBO, WBF etc. Rugby was the same. The Northern Union & The Rugby Union, one for the professional game and one for the amateur game. Slowly both governing bodies made changes to their rules and the schism began. Ending up with two different codes. Local loyalties to their respective clubs kept the codes from overlapping tribal bounderies.

A lot of northerners emigrated to OZ. And why wouldn't they... have you been to Hull? So League became more popular down there.

Got it. That's all I wanted to know. The unbearableness of Hull and the Nazi's are the reasons for League's pockets geographical pockets of popularity. Obvious really.

Feckless take a wee trip to Castleford or Wigan and ask them what they think of Union .

I think League will wipe the floor with Union in next months "Fight for life"Coming up in Auckland next month.
At the moment the Card is;
Liam Messam v Wedall sailor
Isaac luke v Christian Cullen
Slade McFaraland v Jerry Seuseu
Carlos Spencer v Awen Guttendiel
Wairangi koopu v Matua Parkinson (7s)
Chicks;
Hayley Holt( former NZ snowboard champ and Former Richie McCaw girlfriend) v Paige Honele (surfing)
Main event
Monty beetham v Shane cameron ( Cruiser weight Commonwealth games bronze medalist,and former WBO asia Pacific champ)