Surely the reason Union is 'more popular' is simply because when RL was formed it was as a pro league based on a very small geographical area in a place where union already had a significant amateur set up. So RL was basically a pro sport in Lancs/Yorks, RU is a national sport played also in Lancs/Yorks at an amateur and school level. RL was never going to catch up with that head start when it never really tried to in it's early years. RU is still big in Lancs/Yorks at every level but pro. Which is why I laugh when my southern mates refer to RL as 'you' and RU as 'us' on a north/south basis when in reality RU is a truly national game and popular in the north of England AND everywhere else. The popularity of sports on a national basis has almost nothing to do with it's entertainment value no matter what people think.

It's just a quirk of history and no amount of 'marketing' or skilful 'administration' can change the mindset of a nation, football codes strength in the market places was formed a LONG time ago .

Apart from Mr Larder, from memory, all the teachers in Oldham in the late 70's/80's were union players or trained(or interested football coaches) but most ran very capable RL teams.

We forget that Rugby league, though a passion to many on here, is one of a large set of choices of entertainment. It's a crowded market out there and we still display the image of the handcart selling hotdogs whilst football and Union are now the designer clothing booths. It's not easy to shake the image off but it can be done... football's image in the early 80's stank and look at it now.

Good point about teachers I went to an RU school in Salford in the 70's and had the 'pleasure' of being reffed by the one eyed Fran Cotton an RU star who's da played RL I think was a teacher or coach at Leigh GS? Your own Keith Fielding was a teacher at Marple High School as well as being a Superstar

Football had an image problem, but it was still the dominant sport at both professional and amateur levels.

Part of RU's recent success has been sustained change to make it more attractive to spectators, it could probably do more (and probably will as there are still dead weight aspects from the amateur era), it just has to slowly win over the purists who are nostalgic for the days of seriously unfit players rolling around in mud with a try being scored once every other week. As they die out they'll be able to cut more of that dead weight out. With RL a lot of that ground was covered a long time ago and now it's just tinkering, occasionally it works like the 40/20, other times it is so so, like changing replacement rules or kick restarts or when the ball is classed dead in goal. We're not looking at some parts of RL that have become frustrating like the way that the interpretation of the forward pass favours generic flat attack and every other pass is borderline forward, the interpretation of the knock on that has become a de-facto fumble rule so rather than a player having to recover the ball from behind them when they knock it [ibackwards[/i, which might create a bit of excitement, a knock forward is given and the players instinct is to make the ball dead as quickly as possible. Scrums are a farce, I'd personally like to see a return to RL style contested scrums (which are not the same as the RU form which have had their own problems), but the current approach simply bunches together 12 random players for thirty seconds.

Interesting answers, but to have my two pence worth. Although born & brought up 8 miles from Hull I never had the chance to play league at school while my cousins played League in primary school. I had only soccer. Up till WW2 Beverley had a league club & very successful at amateur level. Once at secondary (1960) I was introduced to Union & played until mid 20,s (when banned for training with a Pro League club) It is interesting to note that Beverley did not have a Union side until the late 1950’s & that was originally my schools old boys. Also worth remembering that the great expansion of Union happened also in the late 1950’s early 1960,s. The reason the post war boom in secondary education when thousands of new teachers were trained at new teacher training collages that based their training & ethos on public schooling traditions. That is what led to Union getting its foot in state schools & the new collages across great swathes of the UK. Union until 1995 was more about participating than watching. I played county level when maybe only a couple of hundred would be there.
Even playing international in the Far East we only got a couple of thousand. It has been the international game with a fixed position in the social calendar that has pushed Union onwards & they have reaped the rewards of TV cash & having built up huge cash reserves from gate money during the pre professional era. As a League fan I can only wish our sport would work for the game & not club loyalties. The one chance we have I think is that Union is becoming to specialised & the average guy is finding that unless they are giants or 20 stone monsters they can't play some positions. At the lower levels League is easier to learn & play. The armed forces are finding that League is a lot better for smaller units as finding enough players of the right build to play some positions is difficult. I also think a lot prefer our game once they have a go & that is the key to getting the word out.

I got an email in my inbox today asking if I was interested in England v France Six Nations ticket at £250 (+VAT!) a pop.

Hey, maybe it's like diamonds and mink coats: the more you keep the price artificially high, the more you please the punters cos they don't want it to be cheap and accessible to every Tom, Dick, and Harry.




I feel much as Nye Bevan did about Tories.