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What would happen, you reckon, if rather than the never-ending “war” between rugby league and rugby union if the cousin codes just joined up, pooled resources, and took on the common winter footy enemy: Australian Rules?
Oh yeah, and the All Blacks. The dastardly All bloody Blacks.
And the Poms, and Ireland, and the FFA…
And whoever else wants a stoush! Two rugbies! Comin’ at ya!
Not sure how it would work, this great co-joining of codes – this is one of those columns you begin with a premise and then just rip into it.
But what if Rugby Australia and the National Rugby League just went: Stuff it, we’ll join up together and pool resources, and share our everything.
If players signed a contract with one branch of the new Australian Rugby League Union (ARLU) then they could be eligible for the other branch.
The Wallabies could have the pick of league’s best outside backs.
NRL clubs – sucking on a salary cap bolstered by top end of town money – could see how Will Genia might go at No.7 for the Broncos, or David Pocock would go standing in the middle of Brookvale Oval and strangling people with his mighty, ridiculous arms.
(Photo by Mark Nolan/Getty Images)
Israel Folau (almost wrote about him, got too ranty) could play Origin for Queensland and then for the Wallabies in the Bledisloe Cup.
Josh Addo-Carr could run out for the Storm one season, spend the next one travelling the world with the Aussie Sevens boys in prep for the Olympics.
Sam Burgess could have been given time to become an England outside-centre, while still bopping about for the Bunnies.
Fantasy land, perhaps.
No – it is.
But each code has, already, branches of its game.
Union has sevens, 10s and XVs.
League has nines and 13s.
Get ARLU going and its professional employees could turn out in sevens, nines, tens, thirteens and fifteens, depending where they’re picked, and when the World Cups, or Olympics, or Origin, or whatever, whenever, is on.
The Sea Eagles could join up with Norths, Gordon, Manly and Warringah. Share players. Join forces and lobby the politicians to fix up Brookvale Oval for a big bloc.
The Raiders could join the Brumbies. Both clubs could tap the greater resources of “rugby” players in the ACT, Monaro, the Riverina.
You wouldn’t sign with the Dragons or Waratahs or Rebels or Aussie Sevens – you’d sign with ARLU, and then play wherever you felt like, or wherever they picked you.
Women’s footy could work the same way. Would it be worse if it did?
You could still have an NRL. You could still have provincial and club rugby competitions.
It’s just that former combatants and rivals would be all in it together, sharing the love.
My man Mascy – Roar columnist Steve Mascord, rugby league’s last great Believer – says Canadians and Americans, Mexicans and Jamaicans, and many other “ans” don’t see any difference in the rugbies.
There’s slight differences at the tackle/breakdown, restarts, possession. You don’t wear helmets.
But plenty of the disciplines are the same. You catch the ball, tackle, run, kick, pass.
And for an internationalist like Mascy, that’s cool. That’s not something to be threatened by. It’s positive. If people like “rugby”, how much will they like rugby league?
Why differentiate?
You could have, eventually, players like Sonny Bill Williams and Brad Thorne who could just flit back and forth between the codes whenever they felt like it.
And there wouldn’t be so much of a tug-of-war (well, there probably would) but these sort of players would be paid by ARLU’S greater God of Television revenue, and be able to choose the variant of rugby they played, whether it be Origin one year, Olympics the next, Rugby World Cup the one after…
They could play in Japan over the summer, run out for the Roosters in Round 4, crash it up guts for the Blues, go on tour with the Wallabies.
(Photo by Steve Christo – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
Yes, you’d have to be really, very good.
But consider all that beautiful depth created by league tapping union players, and vice versa.
That’d be good, wouldn’t it?
Wouldn’t it?
Talented kids wouldn’t have to sign up as “rugby” or “league” players – they’d have open slather. The greater game of “Rugby” – represented in Australia by ARLU – would sign the best players, and then mete them out, depending who wanted them and where they wanted to go.
Granted, I still don’t know how it would work. Thought it might’ve come by now. Money-wise it would take some working out.
Culturally, it would very much take some getting used to.
Ha. There would be people railing against it like Japanese soldiers fighting in the jungle.
Rah-Rahs have been rubbing against Mungos since 1908.
But where’s that got us?
After 120 years of banging heads and squabbling, league’s less international than sumo wrestling while the All Blacks are closing in on superiority over us such that bookies are refusing to take bets about them.
The All Blacks are closing in on $1.00.
Rugby union in Australia is undergoing a deep period of introspection.
Rugby’s a dud. Super rugby, anyway. The Wallabies can’t fill Homebush against the All Blacks.
Rugby league’s international appeal is summed up by the fact that rugby league is illegal in Dubai. If you’re caught rugby league-ing in Dubai they’ll put you in jail in Dubai, which is almost as silly as Folau’s latest superstitious Muppetry, I could have written it, I did not.
Anyway!
If RA and NRL, NSWRL and NSWRU, Broncos and Reds, and all the rest, pooled resources and shared players and money and infrastructure, everything, and took their “products” – sevens, nines, tens, 13s and XVs, men and women – to the television people, and said, “The rugbies, united, will never be divided!”, and so on…
What would happen?
A glorious big pool of Australian “rugby” players to spread amongst all the clubs, states, provinces, franchises and national teams?
Or dogs and cats living together in Hell?