Johns Magic said:
You understand nothing, and you've provided no evidence to support your case this entire thread.
Apart from parading every cliche on Union v league i've ever heard you haven't exactly been strong on evidence either.
During the late 70's and early 80s my mother's cousin played for the Wallabies, and i actually had a pretty fair interest in the game in the days Campese was the best attacking player in any code, despite his belief that tackling wasn't his job. I also watched a heap of the Ella brothers live while watching my relative play.
I haven't taken a lot of interest since he retired, but i have seen the way the game has changed dramatically from the day it became a professional sport. They have developed strong defence, but the rules of their game make it very difficult to counter that defence. Campese and the Ellas were the best and most exciting Union players Australia has ever produced and none of the four would last a minute in today's game.
Union could have taken the country by storm after the world cup in Australia if they hadn't served up the steaming pile of sh*t their code has become.
The only time you will see brilliant attack in a union game now would be in a game like Australia v some minnow country, where one side can attack and the other side can't defend. When the top countries meet each other tries are as rare as soccer goals because of good defence and the incredible number of potential infringements possible in the game.
Union is going backwards rapidly because people have actually taken a long hard look at it in recent years and all the thinking fans have decided it is crap.
You can trot out all your cliches on how it is a thinking man's game and league is just a simple game for idiots, but as Abe Lincoln said, you can't fool all the people for long (sort of).
Even the people who run the sport are aware that it is increasingly on the nose because the rules of the sport are not appropriate now that the game is being played by fit athletes these days.
I haven't watched a game of union since the Australian WC, but just by reading the match reports from the games in the last WC i know the game is going backwards as a spectacle as players get fitter and fitter.
The powers that be in Union are trying to overhaul the rules to make the game actually watchable, but the poor buggers are hogtied because the obvious way to go is to make the game more like league, and they'd rather slit their own throats then do that.
