If you think things are bad read this pile on palony about "Rugby Yawnion" The comments at the bottom are fantastic !! www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport ... 12801.html

If you think things are bad read this pile on palony about "Rugby Yawnion" The comments at the bottom are fantastic !! www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport ... 12801.html

Quote ="rooster_rhino"If you think things are bad read this pile on palony about "Rugby Yawnion" The comments at the bottom are fantastic !! www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport ... 12801.html'" dr josef goebells springs to mind

Quote ="rooster_rhino"If you think things are bad read this pile on palony about "Rugby Yawnion" The comments at the bottom are fantastic !! www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport ... 12801.html'" dr josef goebells springs to mind

Do you think he wrote this with a straight face?



Guffaw.

I’ve had a laugh in Halifax before!

I was also going to paste that line. I guess he's had a memory wipe, or even fake memories implanted. Until Clive Woodward came along and exposed how feeble defences - particularly in the home Unions - were (and he was ridiculed in his first 3-4 years in charge of England to boot), there were zero attacking skills in Union, other than kick and chase. I read an article in the late 1980's in one RU publication bemoaning the lack of will to score tries, the conclusion was that to make it worthwhile to attacking sides the try would have to be awarded in the region of 12 points to compensate for the huge number of kickable penalty opportunities.

Here's what they should do to make Union more exciting, reduce the number of defenders to create more space, make the defence retire 5-10 metres behing the ruck (they already did this for the set piece scrum recently), allow quick ball from the ruck area by say, making it un-contested? Encourage more mobile forwards by making scrums basically un-contested and abolish the line-out - just have a tap re-start.

I honestly don't think I've read such total cobblers for a long time.

Amongst journalists, of whom writing bollax is often part of the job description, Rugby Union journalists are frequently up there as the most prolific of bollax-writing amongst their peers. Nancy-ball writers are very proficient at the art, but RU writers never fail to provide articles of utter bollax when their teams are losing, their crowds are dropping, or they are just too p[ii[/issed on after-shave to write coherently.

i'm sure the league influence on union only came about after the cross code challenge when wigan embarressed bath
from what i remember wigan could easily have scored over 100 points in the league game but decided not to humiliate bath too much but in the union game managed to hold bath to a narrow win
union had no clue as to how to do attacking lines and even less about how to stop them, add to this a basic inability to pass a ball and you can see why they had to get better coaches with the best being ex league guys

most union people will admit that their product had become almost unwatchable at times which raises the question as to how they can then attract 75k to club games?

A question that all RL administrators should look at when we can't fill much smaller stadia for international games and cup semi-finals, finals & even grand finals.
A point repeatedly made by McF about the abysmal marketing in RL compared with RU.

Part of it is down to the affiliation that your local RU club will have with the English RU and the fact that they have effectively ruled the sport for 100 and more years from one central office rather than dividing and partitioning their organisation because of petty infighting, power struggles, and downright childish-ness.

I don't have an insight into how the RFL works at an amateur level but I've heard enough stories to understand that its often like trying to get a kindergarten full of kids to all agree in taking turns at the sandpit, I have however seen how the ERU works at amateur club level and it pretty impressive stuff.

There is no doubt that most of your local amateur RU clubs were started with bequeaths of land and wealthy patrons to fund buildings and maybe one paid groundsman etc, but these days most of them operate in exactly the same way as your local amateur RL club, with the exception that the ERU gives them an immense amount of support, both financial and administrative, if you are a trustee of such a club you are told immediately where the grants are being made this year and you are assisted all the way through applying for them, in short you are not running the show on your own, its almost like a franchise operation.

And this co-operation is reciprocated when it comes to distributing tickets for internationals or one-off "specials" at Twickenham like the opening day of the season double-headers - there are now very few freebies available for England games but if you desperately want to go to a major game then joining your local club and asking the secretary for an application form is the recommended route, its also likely that you will not go on your own but as a party from your club, usually of dads and lads and you will almost certainly all meet up at the ground and sit together, its difficult to explain if you're used to buying individual tickets for a RL international at a random football ground where you might not sit with your own party because the RFL will probably send you completely random tickets, and at the end of the game you'll be left thinking "those seats were a bit narrow" rather than being eager to get your hands on some tickets for the next international.

It all starts at the lowest amateur club and works up from there, we have the same history as the ERU, but we have handled our admin totally shambolically by comparison

Very true post. I hope in years to come RL will get their act together and improve their crowds drastically.

I would guess it all started when it was run as an amateur sport by wealthy patrons.
Since RU turned professional cracks have appeared in the solid facade.
Look at the rows between the premiership clubs (i.e. the 1st totally professional outfits) & the RFU run famously in Carling's words by 57 (I think) boring old f*arts.
The comments about RL are spot on, something that Richard Lewis was brought in from outside, therefore, bringing no baggage with him, to sort out.
But BARLA is still not fully onside in this.
Much of it, IMV, is down to petty individual quarrels & people refusing to give up their perceived power for the good of the game as a whole.

Hilarious. Is he Ireland's answer to Stephen Jones ?

I also notice he assumes all RL players have at some point "turned their backs on RU", and he fails to mention former Ireland defensive coach Graham Steadman contribution to Irish rugby.

Or Mike Ford as a coach & Rocky Elsom as a player.
I wonder if he complained when all the RU converts to RL went back into RU & helped the Lions beat the springboks on the 1st Lions tour after the onset of professionalism?
Tait, Gibbs, Bentley, Bateman.

Young & Quinnell too?

Correct, but only Gibbs,Tait & Bentley played in any of the Tests.

It's not just about the RFL "getting their act together though" nowadays you need money, lots of it, and thats something which the RFL simply don't have. As other people have mentioned the marketing for RL is relatively poor, but again to have good marketing you need a lot of money. The simple fact of the matter is that there is a lot more money floating around in Union than there is in League.
Just as an example I remember a few years ago Heworth basically having a whip round and then getting some of the 2nd team lads to build a new dug-out. At York RUFC a group of local businessmen who are union fans have part funded the rebuilding of the changing rooms and bar area, and consistently put money into the club.

This isn't to say that the RFL have/had no faults, but things are a lot easier to do when you've got plenty of money.

We also need those 60-80,000 people who attend the Grand/Cup Finals to start attending internationals too.

I'm currently watching French RU on ESPN. The simple reason RU doesn't score tries, is that they don't know how to attack utilising passing.

It is quite embarrassing.

Yep, their attacking skills are pathetic (in general). Their passing is generally slow and inaccurate (and for some reason every single pass is spun regardless of the distance, never quite worked that one out) and their lines of running are rubbish/non-existant.

There are obviously a few exceptions but only a very few, however I have been quietly impressed the few times I've seen Cipriani play.

I decided to have a quick look back at some of Mr Bills previous pieces of prose for the Belfast Telegraph and back only on the 12th of December he wrote this -

[urlhttp://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/rugby/peter-bills-university-challenge-to-professional-code-14595370.html[/url

I suddenly think that Mr Bills piece on the 26th December is more of a cry for help... I think he is clearly coming to the realisation that, in general, RU is indeed a poor spectacle and is struggling to come to terms with the fact that a game he clearly loves is no longer satisfying him in terms of on-field action and entertainment.

I really honestly think someone from HQ or the RFL should invite him over, all expenses paid, to come to either Leeds v Cas on the 5th Feb or indeed the WCC at Elland Road. It would be interesting to see what he would then write when he got back!

Personally, I think he should give in and start and watching Super League.

Ok, I thought this Peter Bills was Irish but I think he might be South African.

[iPeter Bills is Chief rugby correspondent for Independent News & Media worldwide. He contributes regularly to the group's titles in Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand and England, including 'Rugby News' magazine in London.
Peter is an award winning sports writer who has been writing on rugby union for almost 40 years. The author of 12 books on the game, he is also a former editor of 'Rugby World' and 'Rugby News' magazines in London.
He covers rugby all around the world and has written on the game from every major rugby playing nation, from Argentina to New Zealand, South Africa, Fiji and Japan plus all over the Britain, Ireland and Europe. His columns on rugby appear in many of those countries.
He has worked with some of the greatest names in the game on their autobiographies including Gareth Edwards, David Campese, Jean-Pierre Rives, Bill McLaren, Willie John McBride, Corne Krige and Dean Richards. He also wrote a special anniversary book on the history of London Irish and his most recent publication is, 'Rucking & Rolling', a look at international rugby over the last 60 years.[/i

It would be interesting to know whether he has ever seen a top-flight RL game in the flesh and whether someone should make sure he should! He is clearly a reformist judging by his other pieces!

That's quite a CV he boasts, which makes his ignorance all the more impressive, and his moaning all the more petulent

That has to be one of the finest disections of RU Vs RL i have heard in a while and i know you only scratched the surface. Nice one, my faith in southstander is returned from exile.

He's clearly yearning for the days when international Rugby Union matches consisted of 60 scrums a game ...

That is the one thing that divides RU, the inability of forwards to release their grip on the "old ways" when forwards saw themselves as being the main playmakers in the game and the backs were called "the ladies".

Despite the law changes last year and all the efforts of the ERU to open up the game and make it more attractive and simpler to understand for new spectators, you still see the same old forwards running the ball over the top of a maul straight into the next power struggle, and on and on up the pitch yard by yard - the enlightened teams play that for four or five movements, draw in half of the opposition then throw the ball out wide, the rest just plod on regardless.