Clash Of The Codes

I said I wouldn't do this. On November 17 I declared all Stephen Orford-related blogs closed. Ended. Finished. Concluded. Ex-blogs. But........

Today a colleague sent me an article from the Daily Telegraph about rugby league. Before I even looked at it I asked 'is this more pro-union propoganda?'. I knew the answer well before it came. This particular colleague is as pro-union as John Inverdale and David Campese but not, as it turns out, as pro-union as the author of this repugnant bile that the DT saw fit to publish on it's website.

If I told you the piece was entitled 'Rugby League Is Not A Sport, It's An Atrocity', you would easily see where it was headed. Written by the amusingly named Paul Pottinger (is that made up?) the general thrust of the piece is that rugby league is not worth the proverbial wank and that it exists only in 'grimy northern towns' and 'rustic French villages'.

Ignoring Pottinger's lazy stereotyping I'm tempted to ask, 'so what?'. Does everything have to be popular in Wales and Argentina to have any value? So rugby league is not global. Nor are American Football or baseball but they get along just fine. If I have a criticism of rugby league it is that we continue to try and ram it down the throats of comitted philistines in South Wales, London and France. Should the pro-union scrum-lovers actually bother to sit down and watch a game of rugby league they will soon deduce that it is a pulsating, all-action collision sport played by proper athletes. Those actually within rugby union appear to have cottoned on to this fact, employing many of rugby league's finest in coaching roles and persistently sniffing around league's best players with their huge sacks. Of cash.

And while we're at it let's talk about rugby union shall we? From a style point of view. If I can be so bold as to use the word 'style' in the same sentence as 'rugby union'. Not sure I can. Pottinger describes rugby league as a game in which the players run 'strict linear patterns until a mistake is made and one falls over the other's line'. The point hasn't been missed this badly since Richard Keys and Andy Gray said 'but we weren't on air!'.

On the other hand, rugby union at the top level can only look on jealously at anyone who attempts to run with the ball, whether in strict linear lines or otherwise. Running and passing at the kind of speeds employed by rugby league players is too great a proposition athletically for the 15-a-side men, who choose instead to lump the ball 60 yards up the field into touch. In that sense, union wins hands down in terms of audience participation. If you're heading to a union game keep your wits about you because you know that at any time the ball WILL be hurtling towards you following one of the many pointless, aimless punts. And then you'll get to see a line-out. Oh the joy. The joy of seeing two short, pig-like skinheads lift their taller, jug-eared team-mate up into the air to compete for the right to bat the ball down to the waiting scrum half. A scrum-half who is simply chomping at the bit to knock it on a dozen or so times before finally executing a 10-yard pass to the fly-half (what we sensible folk call a stand-off). And then another kick to touch.

So dull and without athletic merit is rugby union that it had to increase the number of points awarded for a try from four to five, a last-gasp, bended-knee plea to it's exponents to please, please, just occasionally, try running with the ball. It hasn't really worked, nor has the similarly desperate innovation of awarding bonus points in many competitions for teams scoring more than three or four tries. In league, if you score less than three or four tries in a game you have either had a real shocker or the defence you have come up against has played to a very high level indeed.

Pottinger refers to rugby league scrums as 'flagrant, non-agressive pacts'. And? Good. Who wants to see a proper scrum anyway? Is there anything more dull than watching huge men grab hold of each other, pushing, shoving and farting until someone locates the ball and boots it into touch again? Or worse still, have the referee spot some infringement, unfathomable to even the keenest union afficionados, leading to ANOTHER shot at goal from where union gets around 80-85% of it's turgid scoreboard action. Get rid of them. Just get the fecking game started again and get a few bigger blokes out of the way so we can see some handling skills.

The Six Nations (formerly the Five Nations but union is global nowadays. Shit, but global) starts soon. I'll be out getting my genitals removed without the aid of anaesthetic or listening to the full back catalogue of Jedward.

EPILOGUE

It has been pointed out to me by my union-loving friend that Paul Pottinger's article did not come from the Daily Telegraph, but instead was spewed out by The Telegraph in Australia. Sincere apologies for this factual error. What can I tell you except that I knocked this up in 45 minutes when I had finished work yesterday? To date, this is the only inaccuracy in the piece that my union-loving friend has found. It seems the rest is inarguable fact.