No….. You have forgotten one thing. There is an elephant in Rugby League’s backyard and It’s name is AFL. This is not such an issue for Rugby as it has the rest of the world to fall back on but for League it is most probably a matter of life and death and It is a battle that they are slowly loosing. Don’t get me wrong. I am no AFL fan and grew up with Rugby League but nor am I of a generation that the code needs to court to survive. My prejudices are well and truly rusted on and I am unlikely to change my viewing habits any time soon but It is AFL that is winning the hearts and minds of younger Australians not Rugby League and I am conscious of this each time I go to Henson Park to watch the Newtown Jets. I have to remind myself which week the Jets are actually playing because each alternative week the ground boasts not Rugby League posts but AFL posts. Now my fathers generation would never have imagined that possible in such a traditional and Iconic Rugby League venue, smack back in the heart of what was once working class Sydney. The same thing is happening in the South East corner of Queensland. Community fields that were once exclusively assigned for use by either of the two rugby codes are being forced to share facilities or in some instances are being designated for the exclusive use of AFL. It is happening in regional areas too, once the heartland of Rugby League. There is no more zealous a supporter of Rugby League than Roy Masters and he wrote an article highlighting the demise of community Rugby League in the bush last year which I urge you to read.

I take your point about Soccer but the difference is that a lot of the talent playing both Rugby codes is transferrable. I remember the days that League bought Michael O’Connor, Wally Lewis and Ricky Stuart. It started off as a trickle and by the late eighties, just prior to Rugby going professional it became a flood. Phil Gould knows it. That’s why he acted like a big sook when Sua’ali’i moved across. He and Manu won’t be the last. As you allude too, it might take some time but I can guarantee that Rugby League fans are destined to reap what they themselves helped to sow.

How many private school boys are playing for the wallaby’s Ed ?
How many of the other 8 million registered Rugby players worldwide went to GPS schools Ed ? If you are going to spin myths at least try to furnish us with a bit of knowledge .

This article is so farcical as to be comical and made more so by the gloating of Rugby League supporters at what they see as Rugby’s expense.
Does the author suppose a merger should happen before or after the next Lions tour, before or after the 2027 Rugby World Cup or perhaps after the 2029 Rugby Women’s World Cup in Australia. Does the author also suppose that such a merger would go ahead with the blessing and sanction of World Rugby who are at the very least partners in the aforementioned events.
There would be more sense in Rugby League merging with the Gambling Industry it’s all but in bed with them now anyway. I find it extraordinary how myopic and narrow minded some Australian supporters can be. Do they suppose that the World stops at Charles Kinsford Smith Airport and that sport in Australia lives in a kind of vacuum. AFL comes close to living in a vacuum I grant you but if Rugby League’s increased reliance on cherry picking Rugby Union players from Junior level tells you anything it must surely tell you this, that if Rugby is going to cannibalise itself. It is not Rugby Union but Rugby League that will be in post mortem.
Yes, Rugby in Australia is in a world of pain. That is not in question but I think it’s time we draw a broader picture before bringing in the undertakers just yet. Celebrity Journalist Peter Fitzsimmons played not only for the Wallaby’s in the 1980’s but for Brive, a second division Rugby Union club in France. He recently published an article in the SMH indicating that Brive’s Salary Cap is twice that of The Roosters who are generally regarded in Australia as one of, if not the richest clubs in the NRL. Brive are not even in the Top 14 but currently running third in the second division pro D2. That tells you something surely but…. hey, I’m only scratching the surface. The opening match of the last Rugby world cup was watched by 18.5 million in France alone. Even 3 million Germans tuned in and they weren’t even participating. A record 2.437 million at an average of 50,775 per match, attended the tournament and the tournament accumulated a whopping 1.33 billion viewing hours. That is up 30 percent on the 2015 tournament in England. This was on the back of a record breaking world cup in Japan four years earlier. I could go on. The tv figures and the growth of player participation in South America is particularly impressive. There are currently over 8.4 million registered Rugby players globally. No wonder Rugby League don’t bother to develop their own. I think some people should be careful what they wish for because the predator one day might be pray the next….. just saying. MERGE,
you have got to be kidding. Like the rest of America, I won’t be watching the Rugby League in Vegas next weekend and that’s a sure bet.

That’s it Jeznez, You have got it in one. The people are sick to death of watching a glorified training run for the All Blacks and Wallaby’s. Even now, Waugh just doesn’t get it. He talks of Quality. Sure we want quality but as you alluded to, we want competition. We want a competition that we can engage in at a local level where an outcome is uncertain more often than not. I don’t care about the Wallaby’s and even less about the All Blacks. I want to be entertained.

Good for them. I don’t suppose a vast number of those so called supporters actually know what they agree or don’t agree with until they are told what is good for them. I hope they love it because I certainly don’t and I hate that it has cannibalised a game that for over a hundred years was a cultural touchstone. I can bet you one thing. This gimmick for that is all it is, won’t endure for half as long. I guess as the saying goes; there is no accounting for taste or lack there of.

That’s great !! Hopefully it crashes and burns from here
or maybe the geniuses at CA could make it a 5 over contest instead.

In America there is a dedicated channel for everything. So what ? Why, should I care about growing the game. I care about as much about growing T20 cricket as I do about population growth. Both are out of control and bad for the planet as far as I can see. One is as draining as the other. I want my entertainment to be uplifting not sink me in a sea of drudgery and banal futility. Test Cricket at its best does that. T20 for me, simply does not. If people are drip fed the idea that T20 cricket is life enhancing and they buy into that dream then that is there concern not mine,

Exactly, It’s a cash grab !! Why should I care about T20 cricket ? It is like reading a cartoon compared to War and Peace, It is like a 3 min Milli Vanilli pop song as compared to the drama of, say for example, the 1812 overture. It is so one dimensional, so uninterestingly one dimensional that I would rather watch a fly crawling up a wall. T20 is for people with A.D.H.D. I hope Starch or Starc or whatever his $24 million gold carrot name is enjoys his record pay day and thinks altruistically that he is growing the game but in truth, he is only participating in a mindless race to the bottom of the entertainment industry.

I am aware of the Gabba fixture. I’m just highlighting what form of the game CA is prioritising. Television and CA for years campaigned for day/night test matches by pointing to a dwindling interest in Test cricket. It was promoted as a kind of panacea. Now CA have no need for it beyond a single test. What’s changed… well clearly CA’s agenda. The BBL is their number one priority. As cricket cannibalises itself day/night tests have fallen victim to scheduling and pricing pressures. They haven’t been embraced more fully as you might have once expected but as you say limited to mostly the one test per season. Furthermore Test match tickets have not been subsidised or discounted like BBL tickets have been over the last decade. CA seeks to optimise scheduling of the season to suit the BBL and often, though I concede not always as yet at Test cricket’s expense. Why ???? Well clearly That’s the new reality whether CA acknowledge it or you choose to recognise it. The BBL is number one ☝️ priority.

At last someone with a brain. Totally agree Timmuh. Next thing people will be telling us that we have separation of powers and democracy. Wake up, please. We have an oligarchy that controls everything from Democracy to the once gentile game of Cricket. Stop accepting the orthodoxy. The ICC controls little to nothing, it just pretends to. That its role. That’s its unspoken raison d’être as it were. To conceal the avarice of others that don’t have the greater good of the game at heart but greater profit.

Totally agree Josh. The ICC is a bit like Australia’s ICAC. It’s a smokescreen that allows the greedy to corrupt further the great game of cricket for their own avarice.
Please see my other post regarding this. People truly are gullible if they believe that the ICC will save cricket from itself. It’s as toothless as the state’s Building Regulations authority.

I’d like to see no more BBL

I agree with you Ad Tastic if that is indeed the priority but I suspect it is not. We were told that Day/Night matches were a priority and then CA stuck the West Indies on during the day mid week. Evidently the only priority for CA is to undermine the longer form of the game and to keep their masters, be it the Australian Government or the Media (Australian or as is increasingly more likely, Indian) happy. My guess is that all forms of the game are now being sacrificed for India’s insatiable thirst for T20 cricket. CA won’t let the South Australian premier or the South Australian public or the traditional form of the game disrupt what they see as being long term the sacred cash cow. Don’t disrupt the disrupter’s. Just ask the Taxi Industry if they weren’t shafted when Uber were given an armchair ride into the passenger transport market. How Ironic that some of us still think of Australia as being a land of a FARE Go.

I think you are living in a fantasy land Colin if you think that cricket is controlled by the ICC or the respective cricket boards. They are merely acting as a conduit, a third party if you will. Don’t so readily accept the orthodoxy. US media giant Walt Disney and India’s Reliance Industries paid 8.6 billion for the rights to the IPL. They demand more than their pound of flesh. A couple of tweed jacketed old fools bemoaning the state of the game in the long room of Lords is inconsequential to them. It is pure undiluted greed that is in control of cricket’s destiny. Nobody of any REAL consequence cares a tinkers cuss about being custodians of the game anymore, Sure a couple of old legends like Geoffrey Boycott might speak out from time to time but if you will excuse the crude expression, they may as well be “pissing in the wind.” Sadly Ironic that numbers, so intrinsic to the game of cricket should ultimately prove to lie at the heart of its undoing. There are many who will happily ride this gravy train and who can blame them but it won’t be. I’m off at the next T.V station.

They say that we ultimately end up with the democracy we deserve.
Perhaps it is true of our entertainment too. How dumbed down
can entertainment get than a game of T20 cricket. The few times
that I have bothered to watch I have had the visceral sensation that my life force was ebbing from my body with each ball that was bowled.

I’m a Rugby FAN not a Wallaby fan. The parochialism, the whinging and whining has astonished me this year.

I am genuinely amazed RoadBike that a top level Rugby coach like Gatland cannot see the folly of his statement. That is not to discount the other legitimate points that he raised but to eradicate the mark is in fact the complete opposite of what RUGBY should be considering. There is already too much pointless kicking in the game. Rugby League in the 1980’s took measures to successfully curtail what was at the time a surge in up and under’s around the in goal area and have had no reason to water down the changes made, why would Rugby entertain the idea of doing so ? If anything, the scourge of pointless kicking is a bigger problem for Rugby and yet Gatland is telling us that we should incentivise aimless kicking and unenterprising attack further because that is what would happen should you, as he suggests get rid of the mark. It is mind bogglingly stupid. I wonder sometimes if we are watching and playing the same game as those that administer it.

I agree with much of what Gatland has to say but I totally disagree that getting rid of the Mark is a good Idea. On the contrary, I would like to see the mark extended to the Half Way line. The Mark disincentivises kicking the ball into the air, a fact that Gatland himself acknowledges is blighting the modern game and consequently forces ball in hand attacking play, which is the kernel of much of his article. I also feel that it gives the game a certain structure that Rugby at times lacks and does so without being as time consuming as a scrum restart. I know a scrum restart was used by South Africa once in the world cup but this is extremely rare and can simply be amended so that it is no longer an option. If Gatland is opposed as so many of us are to the time consumed by the scrum it begs the question ?? Why would he consider as an option a five metre scrum for a ball being held up over the line. The whole idea behind a goal line drop out was to eradicate the 5 metre scrum. No scrum is more time consuming than a 5 metre scrum. If he must have a scrum for a ball held up over the line then couldn’t he use a little blue sky thinking and suggest that it be at least 10 metres from the try line.

I agree that there is little to no appetite for political messaging and all feasible and reasonable measures should be taken to curtail the disease and ensure that sport remains sport and not a platform for the sporting, cultural or political elite but It is not as if it isn’t happening anyway. Cricket like most other mainstream sport in Australia is blighted by regular, undeniable and conspicuous messaging from the Government. Sport in Australia is used as a vehicle by governments of both persuasions to push an agenda, their agenda. Whether it be over apartheid in South Africa many years ago or in recent times with reconciliation, smoking ceremony’s, inclusivity, diversity, or public services messaging the Government extorts all major sporting bodies in Australia to follow its agenda. It does so in any number of ways, some obvious, others less so. From the free promotion of a sport on any one or more of the numerous national radio or tv networks or by linking community sports funding to governance initiatives. From Infrastructure projects or the building of New stadiums or the regulation or otherwise of media reforms, etc etc the long arm of Government will touch you, even when you don’t consciously recognise it as doing so.

You are right Dingo but you are too optimistic if you think the ICC can or will take control. Cricket is not controlled by the ICC, Oh sure, it is in name but in reality like almost everything else in this world it is controlled by a handful of greedy plutocrats. In crickets case these same vested interests only had to wrestle control from the (BCCI) for short term profit. The powers that be have no need of a long term perspective just as they have no need of the Kerry Packer playbook. They don’t need to go to war to get what they want as Packer did in the 1970’s with Cricket Australia. Like the sword of Damocles, the threat of doing so gives them more than enough leverage to control the game. Supplicate cricketing nations rush to curry favour with the ICC but they do so in the certain knowledge that is the biggest tiger at the table, India that has the numbers. Satellite technology stole professional sport from the community years ago. The change was gradual at first. Open Tennis in the 70’s gave a hint of Satellites potential to transform the sporting landscape. The English Football League which in the early 80’s was still essentially a domestic competition underwent a radical and rapid transformation into the Globalised Premier League we know today by Murdoch’s wealth and interest and of course if it hadn’t been his eager eye that spotted the prize it would have been some other media mogul’s but never has change been so fundamental, so dramatic, so rapid, so transformative or so devastating to a traditional sport than the cannibalisation of cricket. Satellite technology coupled with a new sanitised, commercialised form of the game aimed at a vast, insatiable and ready made tv audience in India has heralded the end of Cricket as I once knew it. Cricket Australia has been white anting the longer form of the game for a decade…… As one punter on this forum pointed out, they continually schedule Test matches in the heat of the day and outside of school holidays and do so whilst still demanding top dollar and subsidising the big bash. Cricket Australia talk out of both sides of their mouth about having the best interests of the game at heart but do so whilst still riding the gravy train. They are not custodians of a living game but a dead one and if it ain’t through some minor miracle not dead yet then they will make sure to kick it some more until it is. The game of cricket has for all intents and purposes been in embalmed . The body wrapped in what is left of the KFC advertising that ubiquitously litters every cricket match. All that awaits now is for the proclamation to be read; CRICKET IS DEAD !! LONG LIVE THE MIGHTY DOLLAR.

The toss of the coin at the start of the match is a contest for possession too. You have, I must say an interesting and imaginative perspective of what pertains to fair play and entertainment. If only the founding fathers were as visionary as you.

I agree with you about SANZAAR. Too much self interest and flip flopping. I don’t subscribe to STAN for Super Rugby. I have little interest in Super Rugby. I only subscribe for the Six Nations, the Rugby Championship and obviously the World Cup. I would still rather watch a game of local club rugby than Super Rugby which if truth be told was only ever run as a vehicle for national team development. It is and always has been a glorified and extended trial lacking the organic passion and tribalism that you would and should expect from a national competition. No wonder it’s been such a commercial failure. Rugby Australia needs a competition that stands on its own two feet not one that is simply an entree to the Wallaby’s. I for one don’t give a rats ass about the success or otherwise of the Wallaby’s, the All Blacks or the Springboks.

I agree CPM, NZAR do not represent the world nor does the traditional hard rump of European provincial Interest. Is there any wonder that Argentina’s Austin Pichot resigned in frustration at the entitled and privileged position that those provinces for that is what many of them are, are afforded whilst World Rugby is held to ransom.For the game to move forward it must be embraced by as many people as possible not just fat lager swilling oafs.

Walking outside increases the risk of injury as well. What convoluted nonsense you are talking. It’s not Australia but the Laws of Rugby that state Scrums are to be used to restart play. Scrums are no longer fit for purpose in the modern game of Rugby. They are constantly being abused by dominant teams to seek advantage rather than for their stated purpose and it says a lot about how observant you are that you haven’t noticed this. Statistically you are correct, less scrums are being packed on average than in years gone by but the length of time taken to complete each has not, which is a salient reason that World Rugby agree’s with us and not you and is taking measures to curtail them.