Jun 28 2007
Rugby Dugby Sat on a Wall…
We’ll never agree on how to play rugby, will we?
We all agree on the basic laws of the Association football game. Interpretations vary from nation to nation, but for the most part, it’s the same game wherever you go, which has helped make it the world’s most popular football code.
But we can’t agree on one set of laws for rugby football, can we? It’s bad enough that the game was split in the nation where it was born, but then it evolved into something completely different in North America. There’s no way to put this game back together again in such a way that the whole world can play by one set of rules, is there?
Oh, sure, you can change the rules that are out there now. Rugby unions around the world are now testing out a series of Experimental Law Variations, or ELVs, that are speeding up the game and garnering rave reviews from players and fans alike. They won’t be in place in time for the 2007 Rugby World Cup, but they might prove to make the game more interesting by the time the next World Cup rolls around in 2011.
Meanwhile, rugby league pundits are suggesting that the current game has gotten stale, and perhaps some rules changes are required to make things more interesting. Rugby league has its own World Cup in 2008, and whether anything in the game changes between now and then remains to be seen.
What would really help rugby is for these unions and leagues to get everyone together and agree on one set of rules by which everyone can play — rugby reunification, if you will. This century-old split in the code may be the only thing that’s preventing rugby from becoming as popular around the world as, say, soccer or basketball. If everyone could get on the same page, maybe rugby football could become as big as Association football, rather than akin to HD-DVD v. Blu-ray.
Alas, this may just be wishful thinking. We humans are a tribal sort, and there’s always that us v. them mentality lurking about — our club is better than your club, our football game is better than your football game, and so on. This is why the NFL and AFL will always have uphill battles when trying to spread their games to other countries. The rest of the world just doesn’t play football like that.
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It won’t happen, because you don’t just have two different codes, you have two different cultures. Any unification would mean some kind of compromise, which would make both cultures unhappy. Also, rugby union doesn’t really need rugby league that much now that it has gone professional. The rugby union code is much more widespread and the IRB world cup is a much bigger deal than the league equivalent.
On the other hand, though union is more widespread and popular worldwide, league has two strongholds where it dominates: north of England, and Queensland and New South Wales in Australia. So it’s something of a standoff. Don’t expect either side to compromise.
As for the gridiron derivative of rugby, code unification might be more possible, but only because the NFL is so much bigger and richer than the CFL. There wouldn’t even be any need for “compromise”, the American version being so much more dominant. However, there is still a little bit of Canadian nationalism at play here and the Canadians wouldn’t necessarily welcome an NFL takeover.
In some kind of ideal world you could see the two codes set up an international organization to unify gridiron, but there is no tradition of such a thing in American sports; gridiron never has had an equivalent of the IRB or FIFA. You also have the problem that high schools, colleges, and the pro game all have their own, different, rules. Convincing all these different parties to come together and agree on a single gridiron code would be next to impossible, barring some sea change in attitudes.
National identity in really, really big in Canada, and those extra ten yards and huge end zones — which a Canadian created — aren’t going away any time soon. Canada doesn’t want to be even more of an NFL minor league than it already is.
As for league, there’s a four-nation international tournament set for 2009 — Australia, England, France & New Zealand — but if the World Cup and the ELVs manage to elevate rugby union, I can’t see league expanding much beyond its traditional strongholds, just like I can’t see gridiron expanding too far beyond it’s stronghold here in America, next month’s World Cup not withstanding.