The rivalry between rugby union and rugby league (or just “Rugby” to AFL-obsessed Victorians) is as old as the hills; way back when league split from the amateur code so they could be compensated for lost wages from injuries: while attempts to combine the games haven’t worked, the two codes have sniped at each other, though many players have switched back and forth and become dual International players.
The A to Z of the NRL will now have a completely biased look at why league is better than union (NOTE: rugby union can be enjoyable at times, especially when the mighty ACT Brumbies are winning. For union fans reading this, these are uneducated opinions on The Game they Play in Heaven: if you’re unhappy, complain to Peter Fitzbandanna, who’ll gladly write yet another anti-NRL editorial).
LESS KICKING
If you want to see a glorified game of “force-em backs”, then watch rugby union. There’s nearly more kicking than a game of aerial ping pong! Tactically it makes sense, as being pinned inside your own 22 is asking for trouble (like the farcical finish to the 2021 Super Rugby AU Grand Final at Lang Park between the Brumbies and Nic Berry’s Reds, when the Brumbies were camped on their own goal-line for the last 10 minutes, tried to protect a small lead, and tackled their hearts out until it became physically impossible to hold the Reds out anymore), and it’s easier to kick the ball as deep as possible and start again from the lineout.
Still, it’s frustrating to watch teams constantly kick the ball away like it’s a spicy chilli in Michael Vaughan’s Instagram comments: if a team is stuck in their 22, you can bet your life savings on the ball being passed way back to give the kicker room to punt it as far as possible. There was a mini-revolution when Super Rugby started in the mid-90s, with a commitment to more running rugby, but that eventually faded away. There’s been attempts to tweak the rules to stop teams kicking so much, but overall, league has far less kicking. Don’t even get us started on the reliance of drop goals/penalty goals in union, but more on that later…
The kicking in league is still tactical, though it tends to be used to earn a booming 40/20, or close to the opposition try-line to earn a repeat set: Alfie Langer made an artform from his cheeky little grubber kicks.
SIMPLER RULES
If there’s one thing that frustrates casual union watchers, it’s the needlessly complicated rules. Most telecasts on Stan/Nine have to provide explanations of penalties (as well as at the ground on the replay screen) so fans know what the hell that penalty was for. While union die-hards froth over the technical, complex rules (ex-Wallaby and now commentator Phil Kearns gets very excited when scrums get messy), the confusion is off-putting for the rest of us. It’s similar to Test cricket: while hardcore cricket fans love the dramatic ebb and flow of a close Test, casual fans are baffled how a game can go for five whole days and still finish in a draw. Again, union officials have tried to simplify the game, most referee decisions are still confusing. The short-form versions like Rapid Rugby, the short-lived Global Tens, and the immensely popular Rugby Sevens, are more suitable for casual fans
Unfortunately, The Man of Feathers’ mission to speed up footy means league has started becoming almost as complicated as union. For over a century, league prided itself on being the “working class” game, with simpler rules that could be enjoyed by everyone: five tackles, kick on the sixth; the other team does the same; rinse and repeat for 80 minutes. The monstrosity of the Six Again rule has forced Fox League and Nein to start showing explanations of Six Again penalties in their coverage. Even then, it happens so quickly that it’s impossible to absorb. While league will never be as complicated as union, there’s some worrying signs for footy fans.
A BETTER DOMESTIC COMPETITION
While Super Rugby started with the best intentions to turn the newly-professional game into a global giant, it eventually got too big for its boots: in the space of 25 years, it grew from 12 teams to 18. While that doesn’t sound like a lot, including sides from Japan and Argentina meant more travel and – worst of all – a complicated triple conference system and an even more farcical finals system, where each conference winner would host a quarter final regardless of their overall win-loss record. This helped powerful Australian teams like the ACT Brumbies, who lapped the comparatively weak Australian Conference and enjoyed a Bruce Stadium quarter final against a far superior New Zealand or South African side, who had every right to feel pissed off travelling to Canberra. When COVID-19 forced the 2020 SR competition to be suspended, separate Australian and New Zealand competitions were launched, culminating in an embarrassingly one-sided Trans-Tasman series in 2021: NZ teams won all but two of the round robin games, with the Brumbies and Reds winning one game each – even then they were lucky, with the Brumbies squeaking home against the Hurricanes after the NZ side missed a penalty goal on full-time, and the Reds nearly blowing a massive halftime lead against the Chiefs. Nearly every other game had cricket scores to the NZ sides. At least the restructured 2022 Super Rugby Pacific comp (with five Australian sides, five NZ sides, Fiji, and a Moana Pasifika side) is more streamlined, though expect the NZ sides to still dominate.
On the other side, the NSWRL/ARL/Super League/NRL competition is arguably one of the greatest domestic sporting codes in the world (ok, it’s not a patch on the mega-popular English Premier League, NFL, and NBA, but it’s up there somewhere). While it blew out to 22 teams during the ARL/Super League split in 1997, it’s gone down to a more manageable 16 since 2007 and will increase to 17 in 2023 and 18 at some point. The current NRL competition is a ratings juggernaut for Fox and Nein, it’s miles better than the UK Super League, players from all over the world want to play in it, and it’s left poor old Super Rugby in the dust popularity-wise (at least in Australia).
SO MANY DROP/PENALTY GOALS
One of the worst things about union is the reliance on drop goals/penalty goals, which are both worth three whole points! Often a team can score more tries than their opposition and still lose on penalties: a good goalkicker is absolute gold in union, as a team can methodically work their way up the field (to be fair, watching a team string together multiple phases inch-by-inch is pretty dramatic and compelling), get in goalkicking territory, and wait for the opposition to concede a penalty. Then the goalkicker steps up and does their thing. Rinse and repeat.
Arguably the most famous union game – the 1995 Rugby World Cup Final between South Africa and New Zealand – finished in a try-less 15-12 win to the Springboks: the Springbok’s Joel Stransky (three penalty goals and two drop goals) and the All Black’s Andrew Mehrtens (three penalties and one drop goal) scored all of the points for their respective sides. Again, union purists would say it was a thing of beauty and you needed to be a real student of the game to appreciate it.
League has a much better balance between try-scoring and kicking, with only two points for a penalty goal and one for a normal field goal. While the new two-point Super Field Goal seems a bit pointless (pun not intended), it’s rare enough to still be exciting when it happens. Field goals only come into play during Golden Point or in the last few minutes of a tied game: even then it becomes predictable as teams rumble up-field and set up for the inevitable field goal shot. Still, the ridiculous pace of V’landysball means more blowouts, so we’re less likely to see predictable field goal shootouts. Whether that’s a good thing or not is a different story.
