Rugby needs an education campaign

Yeh back in 2003 someone I knew from Melbourne was completely ignorant of the Rugby World Cup. And proud of it! Willful myopia is rife down Mexico way. Fed by AFL dominated media. It suits them just fine that NRL scandals are perpetrated by "rugby" players. It doesn't matter about the facts or the details. The other codes can be simply put into the box called "foreign and irrelevant". This is a deliberate development in Victoria. I played rugby there as a kid in the late sixties. It was AFL dominated sure but to keep the punter's heads in AFL goggles for decades on end must take some serious effort. I think that it suits AFL and its media relations to keep the punters ignorant of any thing other than vertical stick footy. It's nothing personal about rugby. AFL also targets soccer with the cold shoulder (with much more justification) But I've been in Victoria in test season and could hardly find a news item on the test the Wallabies were playing. Rebels in 2011 should help that.

And silence was the stern reply....... BTW has anyone noticed that Sarah Jessica Parker looks more and more like a horse face every day??????

I wish someone would tell us what the ARU is doing to promote rugby outside the stronghold cities.........perhaps nobody except the ARU really knows????? SFA.

Well, JF, there's the current discussion, my previous examples, or this, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_football "Rugby football (usually just "rugby") is either of two current sports, either rugby league or rugby union, or any of a number of sports through history descended from a common form of football developed in different areas of the United Kingdom." Interestingly, the discussion page of the wiki article (haven't had time to read it all) focuses as much on the scope of the term football, as it does on Rugby. Of course, I don't know what school wikipedia went to, but I expect you can go and change it if you want. That might be an interesting contest!

Well, looks like you got stirred up, you intellectual giant! I'll be enjoying both games, thanks. Don't need a stopwatch, Might need rewinding after endless reiterations of crouch-touch-pause-engage. :-)

Hey yanks will tell you about the NFL but when they are in Australia they don't know the difference between AFL,Union and Rugby League.

Any observant person who had never seen either rugby code before could tell that there are big differences between the after watching a few minutes of each game. You'd have to be blind or not paying attention not to spot the fact that union involves a contest for possession of the ball, but in league they get up and play it unmolested after the tackle. Union has lineouts, one of the more spectacular sights in world sport, IMO. The defensive lines are much, much closer together in rugby union. Union has players of all shapes and sizes. League players have much less diversity in weight and body types. The ignorance in question is wilful.

you are right there is a point of differentiation, the AFL guys wear tighter shorts :)

if its not your cup of tea fine, but there's something about RL that appeals to Australians. I prefer my footy without a stopwatch thanks.

Find me some articles where Rugby League is referenced as Rugby and we'll see how contested it is.

Yeah they are both team games no doubt...but more fun there ain't, than stirring up those league bastards. Next time you're on Youtube look up League's Biggest Hits or something and tell them all that they are a bunch of big girl's blouses! My favourite pastime...WARNING to be prepared for serious abuse.

You may be right, I honestly cannot watch League anymore, I find it boring in its sameness, the gameplan for a entire season could fill one sheet of foolscap with room left over, the fact that the players all pretty much the same size (no 6'11" monsters need apply), that generally the players appear to be lowbrow rockheads with no doctors nor architects nor town planners. And I used to get season tickets to follow the Tigers once! The Super League War convinced me return to my roots. However to both of you, do yourselves a favour and use a stopwatch to tally how much time in any League game that concerted effort actually made that moment/play/sequence/score possible. In any set of six there will be 4 hit-ups so they don't count, then a pass is attempted, it may go through 2 sets of hands and end up with a hit-up. Contrast that with the S14 final where the Bulls blew the Stormers out of the park by operating as a single unit, the sense of collective menace was palpable, every minute of the game had multiple sets of hands/eyes/brains wanting to contribute to the success of whatever was happening. The only thing that comes close in League if I remember correctly is the Maroons in the Origin series and the Premiership winning Tigers of a few years ago. But this is only for about 5-10 disjointed minutes of the entire match and that is all they need to do to embarrass their opponents. Not sure because I tried again to watch Origin this year and ended up switching to something else after 5 minutes.

So does anyone know how much is done by the ARU in promoting kids rugby away from Sydney/Brisbane/Canberra? (i.e. in Melb, Adelaide, Darwin and Perth). That would be the subject of a good article.......comparing the rugby strongholds with the "have nots". Help wanted! The truth is out there somewhere..........

I lived in Melbourne from 1998 for several years, and the second question asked was "who do you go for?". When giving them my answer, the ACT Brumbies, the response was a "awww, they play with the storm don't they?". Whilst I like to think it is ignorance, some people of the AFL can be pretty smug (Andrew Demetriou surprise at a Socceroo's game being on)!

In what way are the codes basically identical?

And all this will be clearly revealed as we watch the game ?

If you were to watch both games, even to the uninitiated it would be clear they are different games ! . . . this could NOT be said for League v Union.

Folau clearly didn't go to AFL for the representative opportunities. Rugby - Wallabies. League - Origin & Kangaroos. AFL - .... um. Not that it was about the coin ... We can educate all the AFL ignoramuses like this - League is the one on green jerseys with yellow Vs played in half a dozen countries more than AFL; Union is the one played in gold jerseys in dozens of countries more than AFL. Perhaps Israel needs an education campaign too?

Since the corporates took over Rugby and made TV appeal the main objective the two codes are basically identical and the true game of Rugby has virtually gone. I don't think that AFL people will be conned that there is much difference and nor will they care.