please do. Anyway, there’s 10 international rugby union games on this weekend, with 19 countries playing. You can judge whether or not they play quality football. I’m sure you’ll be surprised by some of them.
Samoa v Tonga
NZ vs Australia
Japan v Fiji
Scotland v France
Wales v England
Romania v USA
Ireland v Italy
Argentina v South Africa
Uruguay v Namibia
Chile v Argentina XV

“Rugby union try to play the numbers game against soccer, suggesting over 120 countries play their game. But in all seriousness, only about 10 to a dozen play rugby with any competency.”

I’m sorry but this is a fairly ignorant comment. Take the 25 highest ranked nations in Union: Ireland, New Zealand, France, South Africa, Scotland, England, Argentina, Australia, Wales, Fiji, Georgia, Japan, Samoa, Italy, Tonga, Portugal, Uruguay, USA, Romania, Spain, Namibia, Chile, Canada, Hong Kong and Russia.

All of them can boast teams made vastly of home grown / based players, all have at least one professional rugby team and many have professional domestic competitions, all can draw good crowds to watch them play locally. Sure, rugby is not the No.1 sport in most of these countries, but they have credible domestic presence, clear pathways and almost all of them have qualified for a World Cup based on merit, representing every continent on the planet.

Union is nowhere near Football in terms of its international appeal and presence, but it is a very credible international sport.

This is a very bad article. But for the sake of it, let’s play along. The idea that because someone is a very good RL player it must mean that he/she will automatically be a RU superstar has proven to be wrong time and again. Sam Burgess and RTS switched codes at a time where they were probably the best RL player in their countries, how did that turn out? People will say they were played out of position etc but the truth is that they failed to live up to the hype and ended up going back to RL sooner than later. The key is to prevent the talented players from going to the NRL after school, not to spend millions of dollars trying to lure back RL palyers.

I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that Tom Wright is Australia’s best FB. He seems to make a blunder per game. It just does not cut it at this level.

The (massive) elephant in the room is that League is a fun game to watch, played basically by Australians, Kiwis, Northern Englishmen, and Papua New Guineans. From Australian players you can confect teams like Lebanon, Greece and Italy, from English players you can create teams representing Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Jamaica, and with some Kiwis (and some Aussies) it’s possible to create the Tonga and Samoa squads. But that doesn’t change the fact that the game is still playes mostly in those four countries, and that other countries’ squads will massively rely on players born and raised elsewhere for the foreseeable future. As long as that keeps happening, how can there really be a proper, sustainable international game?

As a big rugby union fan with no major interest in League, I would really like McLennan to stop making a fool of itself. League is a good sport that provides opportunities to people. He’s already made the point that League is big only in Australia while Union is big worldwide. Point taken. Stop trying to draw attention to yourself and showing Union in a bad light as arrogant and full if itself. It’s boring.

Maybe that’s the case in Australia (I wouldn’t know, I’m not australian), but certainly not in every single other country that plays Union. That’s the point.

Oh dear. By which metric is the NRL “by far” the best and biggest competition in the world, of either code? Has he ever watched the Top 14 in France? Huge fanbases, big, well-attended stadiums, geographical spread (specially if you include the Pro D2), massive local derbies, lots of upcoming talent and established superstars, plenty of media attention. Why are League fans and coaches so defensive towards Union? Even Robinson, who states that he likes Union, can’t help but look down on the other code. It’s getting ridiculous.

The whole verbal battle has been pathetic to be honest. The NRL is a great competition, but cannot compete with Union at an international level. It’s as simple as that. Players are allowed to go wherever they like based on whatever they valiue the most. Gould just looks like a big bully thinkimg he can determine what athletes do or don’t. It’s frankly embarrasing.
Also, Robinson argued that the liked union but that the NRL is the biggest competition in the world of both codes. What does he base that on? Attendances? Widespread interest? Number of professional teams? Surely the French game is just as big or bigger than the NRL.

Good article, just a small correction. Sione Tuipulotu qualified for Scotland because of his Scottish grandma, not on residency grounds. Hence he was available straightaway for selection.

Sevens is an Olympic, global sport, something League will never be. You are of course free to prefer League and the NRL, but the siege-like mentality of League fans never ceases to amaze me.

no shame in that, I just suggest that the article could be named “Rugby World Cup: Each TOP TEN Test team’s most irreplaceable player”.

Only half of the Test squads taking part in the World Cup feature in this article. I was hoping to see who would be picked for Chile (Sigren? Fernandez?), Portugal (Appleton? Marques?), Japan (Himeno? Leitch?), Uruguay (Ardao? Arata?), etc. But yet again, only the top 10 teams are spoken about. This has to change surely if we are serious about expanding the game we love.

Reading these threads it really baffles me that there’s still any debate about the popularity of Union v League worldwide, to be honest. Union has professional or semi professional competitions all over the world (including North and South America and countries like Korea and Taiwan, set to be bolstered by the new Asian Grand League which will include franchises from Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines), whereas League has one sensational professional competition in Australia and an average one in England, and that’s it. When League fans say that Union’s popularity is restricted to the usual Commonwealth countries, it is very easy to show them they’re wrong – in the last five years there’s been 40.000+ in attendance in Madrid, 99000+ in Barcelona’s Camp Nou, 15.000 in Santiago, 30.000+ in Sao Paulo, 40.000+ in Washington, 70.000+ in Tokyo, 30.000+ in Vancouver, sold out crowds when the Fijian Drua played in Lautoka and Suva, not to mention regular sold out crowds all over Argentina and South Africa, the Olympics etc.

look, I’m not trying to troll or fight or whatever. I have no inherent hatred of League or anything of the sort. I just come from a country where Union is starting to gain exposure and relative notoriety (very far from the heartlands) and where League virtually does not exist. So all of my knowledge of League is through forums, the internet and social media, and I was pretty excited with the RLWC coming up so watched a fair few games. I’ve also followed the discussions around the RLWC online and have been pretty shocked by the amount of animosity from League fans towards Union. I know there’s a long history between the codes in England and Australia, but it’s still a bit shocking to me how much League fans tend to despise Union, taking its worst games (like England v Argentina) and arguing it’s unwatchable and everyone who enjoys it must be rich and arrogant or whatever. I expected a bit more nuanced analysis from someone who writes for an online outlet, but I was clearly misguided.

I personally love sport in general an can, for example, see and appreciate how meaningful the RLWC seemed to be for Samoan people. Rugby is also a pretty cool vehicle for social advancement in South Africa (see the stories of Siya Kolisi, Makazole Mapimpi etc) and it’d be cool if you could also appreciate that without feeling the necessity to take a dig at Union.

But anyway, hope you have a good day!

Because in my experience most League fans and pundits, for whatever reason, seem to severely dislike Union (or how they call it, “yawnion”), and when they mention it is mostly to berate or belittle it for whatever reason (but not the other way around). In your case, you try to take a clumsy dig at one of South Africa’s most popular sports by calling it a “relic”. It’s hard to take such comments seriously.

I prefer Union, and do comment quite a bit on Union articles. But I also enjoy a good game of League, hence I feel entitled to comment on the League section. Is that a good enough explanation for you?

“Back home, both nations are members of the Commonwealth, largely English-speaking and with increasing cultural connections to rugby league heartlands. Unlike South Africa, they’re relatively unencumbered by historical relics like rugby union.”

I’m always amazed at how Rugby League fans and pundits can’t help but mention Union whenever they talk about their own game.

Based on what evidence do you believe that league will “very likely” overtake Union in Fiji? Number of registered players? Professional pathways? General interest? Attendances?
Union (and especially sevens) is the number 1 sport in the country. There’s and estimated 60,000 registered senior players and 20,000 schooldchildren that play the game (https://www.fijirugby.com/rugby-house/about-us/). The sevens team that won the Olympic gold featured in the official $7 dollars notes. The Fijian Drua sold out both their Super Rugby games in Suva an Lautoka last year. And despite Tier 1 nations poaching the likes of Koroibete, Vunivalu, Vakatawa, Sowakula, Reece etc they still keep producing top, top playing talent and sending them to play all around the world.

I am not australian, do not live there and have zero interest in defending whatever it is that the ARU did there. I was born and raised in South America and speak about the world of rugby as I see it from there. I do not like the old boys’ club of Bill Beaumont and co, but take great heart in a lot of projects that involve rugby to drive social change. I have taught the game in prisons, low income schools and rural communities. Rugby is not a posh game, if you look outside of the usual suspects.
To the point, the author argues that Union is somehow scared of international rugby league and that because it is a sport “based around where you went to school above all things”. Try telling that to the Espartanos and Virreyes clubs in Argentina, to the boys at Trapiales in Santiago, to the kids playing rugby with a plastic bottle in Fiji or Madagascar, to the LGBTQ+ clubs like Ciervos Pampas, Pudúes in Mexico and Titanes in Chile, to the mixed ability clubs of Tarucas and Pumpas in Chile and Argentina.
Furthermore, how do you measure how big an international game is? Maybe numbers of games played, competitive teams, amateur participation numbers, attendances. All of which are way bigger in Union than in League, by a country mile.

There’s a big world outside of Australia. It’s a good idea to peek through from time to time.

“International footy, especially the sort that foregrounds the diversity of cultures within our game, is what terrifies the other codes. Rugby union can never have it authentically, because theirs is a sport based around where you went to school above all things”
This quote is too absurd to be true. The RLWC has been played in mostly small and almost always half empty stadiums for a month in the supposed “heartlands” of the game (with teams made up by aussies and englishmen) while rugby union’s November internationals (which are basically glorified friendlies) have filled stadiums in Tokyo, Edinburgh, Paris, London, Dublin, Cardiff and Padova, with a final RWC qualification tournament played in Dubai between the USA, Portugal, Kenya and Hong Kong, and games in Georgia (v Uruguay), Romania (v Chile) and Spain (v Tonga) just this weekend.
I like watching RL and have nothing particularly against it, but the level of delusion by some of its fans and pundits regarding the state and stature of its international game is mind-blowing, as is the constant necessity to take digs at Union, with not a lot to show for apart from tantrums.

The current Wallabies squad for the november series has only 5 players not born in Australia: Foketi (NZ), Lolesio (NZ), Paisami (Samoa), Skelton (NZ), Tupou (Tonga). This is a grand total of 14% of the 36 players on the squad. Besides, all of them grew up and were schooled in Australia except for Tupou and Paisami.

Maybe keep your prejudices at bay and try to check the information before writing pal.

“Now imagine Fiji, Tonga, Samoa were to all have sides in the competition and all of them were to have that level of salary cap provided from the TV rights deal. If it could be maintained it would have a seriously detrimental effect on rugby union as an international game.”

That’s an interesting take. Nowadays the vast majority of the Union Samoa and Tonga squads are NZ born and raised players that don’t make the All Blacks. Fiji is different though, with an insane conveyor belt of local talent that has provided many pro teams around the world with their talents, not to name sevens.

Furthermore, I do not think that it would have “a seriously detrimental effect on rugby union as an international game”. The reason is simple: there’s many Tier 2 rugby nations in Union apart from the Pacific Islands, which is not the case in League (this is also why altering eligibility rules to allow players to change nations is a must in order to have competitive international rugby league, but not so in the case of Union).

Sure, the (potential and very unlikely) loss of the Pacific Islands would be bad for Union. However, it would not be a killing blow to the sport – there’d still be Georgia, Russia, Spain, Portugal, USA, Canada, Chile, USA, Uruguay, Hong Kong, Namibia, Kenya, the Netherlands, Japan, etc as credible rugby nations that compete outside of the top 10 teams.

It’s pretty simple. International rugby league massively relies in the NRL producing australian talent that’s eligible for other nation(s) through heritage – hence Lebanon, Greece and Italy (three massive communities in Australia and particularly NSW) can afford to field teams at a WC. If it wasn’t for this, they wouldn’t be able to qualify. The issue is that these countries are not producing many players themselves, and there’s not much of a League footprint in them (there’s just 60 registered RL players in Italy).

Scotland are terrible at RL because, well, it is not a sport played in Scotland and the national team is made up by mostly English players who qualify through heritage and are not good enough to play for England (same for Ireland and half the Welsh squad). This is not a dig at them, as I am sure they are proud to represent their roots. It is just the way it is.

Truth is, RL only has two professional competitions: the NRL provides players (mostly born in Australia or NZ) to Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, PNG, Lebanon, Greece and Italy, and Super League provides players (mostly born in England) to Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Jamaica, with the exception being the French.

Growing the international game would require rugby league to be played in more countries. There’s lots of talk about how league is supposed to be taking over the Pacific Islands, but I think there’s much confusion here as Union (and sevens) is still massively ahead in Fiji, and I have not seen evidence of it taking over Union in either Samoa or Tonga. You could argue that having teams bolstered with former Kangaroos and Kiwis grows the game there, but I have only seen them play in either Australia or NZ, so not sure how much of a footprint the game has in Nuku’alofa or Apia.

So, the way I see it, for the time being (and the foreseeable future) State of Origin will remain as the peak of the game with international RL continuing the same dynamic.

“We’ve got, in our 24, four Italians”

This is the key issue, isn’t it? A World Cup is the pinnacle of any sport, where different nations that play a specific game show their strengths, how competitive they can be, the specific style with which the sport is played, but ultimately, how strong the game is in their countries. Having a World Cup with an Italian team that’s made of 83% non-Italian players does not reflect any of the aforementioned points. Same with the Pacific Island nations – sure, you have strong Samoan and Tongan sides, with many, many players that have may have never stepped a foot in the islands but are representing their heritage. Only one player in the Tonga squad was born there. They are 100% entitled to do this, but what’s the point?
Same with other nations like Scotland (only 3 Scottish players), Lebanon (2 born there), Ireland (17 were born and raised in England!) or Greece. Even half of the Fiji squad were born and raised elsewhere.

The point is, a World Cup should reflect the strength of a sport in the global scheme of things. Having a majority of squads entirely reliant on foreign born/raised/trained/based players (who can even change between nations almost as they choose) makes it look like a bit of an illusion for me.