Leagues Apart: The Competing Codes of Rugby
In 2015, Australia and New Zealand locked horns in the Rugby World Cup Final. To that date, both nations had won 2 world cups although they were yet to face-off in a decider. Both countries are rugby crazy and had shown impressive form throughout the tournament. It was a fixture guaranteed to not just hop aboard the hype-train but rather charter its own hype-jumbo-jet to circumnavigate the rugby world before landing at Twickenham. Right? Well, it depends who you ask.
Stats for that world cup state that 1 in 7 Australians ‘occasionally or always’ watched the Rugby World Cup. The same was true of 2 out of 5 Kiwis making New Zealanders almost 3 times as likely to switch it on as their antipodean neighbours. Little has changed since. When the NSW Waratahs played bitter rivals the Queensland Reds in July of this year, just 69,000 people watched on Fox Sports. A decidedly paltry figure even before it is juxtaposed with the 747,000 that tuned in to see the Parramatta Eels battle it out with the North Queensland Cowboys the same weekend in the National Rugby League. Cleary, rugby still enjoys healthy support in Australia – but not Union. This is Rugby League country.
Rugby League’s roots are distinctly working class, very much the Cornish Pasty to Union’s Beef Wellington. And so it is hardly surprising that the split was driven by money. More apt still that it happened in England. The RFU insisted on the amateur status of all players but, given the more working class playing population of northern England, dedicating such ample time to no monetary end had ceased to be tenable for many in the region. Thus, following a meeting in August 1895, 22 Northern Union clubs broke from the RFU to form the Northern Rugby Football Union and professionalism was ushered in. Ultimately, this became the Rugby League.
The ensuing 125 years have seen the rules of both codes meander along different paths. While it remains obvious that both have their roots in an identical pursuit, the differences have become sufficiently significant for each to own virtues and vices of their own. Prior to this year, the totality of this writer’s thoughts on Rugby League could have been written on a gum-shield with very blunt crayon but having been introduced to it in the guise of the NRL (National Rugby League, Australia’s professional Rugby League competition), my knowledge has progressed from rookie to rudimentary.
The first and most obvious difference is that Rugby League is extremely, at times painfully, repetitive. Line-outs are dispensed with and quite frankly it’s nonsensical that scrums have not followed suit. Those that remain are uncontested and baffling in their inanity. The residue is endless repetition of tackles and repeats punctuated by kicks, both grubber and up-and-under.
This, however, is not always a bad thing. Contested scrums regularly number among Union supporters’ principle gripes given they so reliably retard the tempo of the game. Indeed fostering fulmination and frustration often appears to be their sole function. Even when they are executed properly the inability of referees to adjudicate them is so long-standing that it has become an accepted, even romanticised, nuance of the sport. In truth it is unfair, infuriating and alarmingly in need of reform.
The other thing culled by Rugby League is rucks. And two players. Herein lies the genius. The most exciting Union moments are the stunning corner tries, the intricate backline moves and expertly executed overlaps and in making these two adjustments, League ensures that these situations present themselves, and are executed, much more frequently. The untrained eye would conclude that such finishing is due to shoddy defence but the fatigue wrought on defenders is incalculable given the speed of the breakdown and 2 fewer players on both sides. Fatigue leads to holes, overlaps and defensive miss-matches. And rugby league players are experts at exploiting each of them.
The proliferation of overlaps not only means that there are more for the fans to see, but crucially it means the players themselves are more practised at exploiting them. To yours truly coming from a Union perspective, the standard of finishing in League is extremely impressive not just for the clinical nature with which 2-on-3s become 4 pointers but for the acrobatics displayed with bewildering regularity when touching down. Indeed the roll-call of players to have moved from League to Union is testament to such finishing. Lote Tuqiri, Wendell Sailor and Israel Folau have all swapped codes successfully and, although more than one of them have engaged in significant off-field indiscretion, nobody would question their ability to dot down in the corner.
Brad Thorn has proven that League’s more corpulent operators can also make the switch with outstanding results but it is the dearth of cross-overs among half-backs that is most instructive. As previously alluded to, League is at once both exciting and monotonous and while the former epithet is regularly lavished on Union, the latter is applied much more sparingly. Given the decision making onus on the position, it follows that a transition between codes would be particularly demanding for a half-back.
NRL pundits regularly refer to the competition as ‘the most demanding league in the world’ and its high octane and relentless nature certainly lend such a claim an element of credibility. But it is a claim based on brawn while brains are banished to the sin-bin. It is open for debate, but in employing an all-encompassing definition of the term, this writer asserts that the most ‘demanding’ position in Rugby Union is out-half. This is testament to the significant strategic acuity, decision making responsibility and gamut of kicking demands (both place and tactical) on the 10. And the physical onus is hardly much comprised vis-a-vis League. The regularity with which burly Union back-rowers are launched up the 10-12 channel evidences the emphasis placed on gaining precious momentum at the expense of the opposition 10’s physical or, at worst, mental faculties.
The decision-making burden on the League equivalent, half-back, is markedly less onerous. Owing to the relative ease with which ground is made with ball-in-hand, the primacy of kicking for territory is severely diminished as is the requirement to execute elaborate back-line moves. Even the scoring system places less emphasis on kicking. League offers only two points for penalty kicks and just one for drop-goals compared to the three offered in Union for both. The emphasis on and quality of such skills diminishes concurrently. The notion of keeping the scoreboard “ticking-over” is as foreign to League as salary-caps are to the Saracens boardroom.
Perhaps the most high-profile half-back to have ventured between codes is Benji Marshall. The kiwi has plied his trade in the NRL since 2003, picking up a Premiership with the West Tigers in 2005 and a Golden Boot Award in 2010.
However, Marshall signed for the Auckland Blues in 2014 in an effort to apply his proven pedigree in Union. It was a less than illustrious endeavour. Despite initially positive signs, primarily from full-back, Marshall would see out the season with just one start and an additional 5 appearances for the Blues before returning to the NRL the following season.
My reference to Marshall’s experience is of course no sleight on him as a player but at the very least it is indicative of the chasm in the demands of the half-backs in each code.
Concluding as to any one sport being ‘better’ than the other is an obviously asinine exercise. Anyone’s favourite sport will ultimately be governed by the country they are born, local intricacies and all other manner of minutiae. What is true is that those born to heartlands of both rugby codes have strong arguments in their favour. For those of us open-minded enough to accept that, it’s just a matter of sitting back and enjoying.
