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I don't think anyone is suggesting that we pretend the sport was invented in America, more that it is 'American-style' rugby, as in better suited to Americans and more similar to American sports than 'traditional rugby' (union). And that would be a pretty accurate description IMO.
Check out Wikipedia if you don't agree that Canadian and American football have more differences than union and league. Go to Wikipedia and search "comparison of American and Canadian football" and then "comparison of rugby league and rugby union". Also - When McGill and Harvard met in the first cross border "football" game it was the Canadian game that in the ensuing years had the most effect on the two North American codes of football. Finally - the forerunners of the Canadian Football League began play in 1884 while the forerunners of the National Football League began play in 1920.
I'm going to go out on a limb a little because I am not sure, but in Canada, rugby union is called rugby. So, as Canada and the United States are neighbours and very similar when it comes to sports I am going to assume Americans call rugby union, rugby. I believe calling rugby league "American Rugby" will, despite Poul's claims of separating league and union, do nothing but cloud the issue further.
They also call rugby league 'rugby', they don't usually differentiate between the two codes at all. A lot of Americans I have spoken to have taken a while to understand that rugby league is the name of a sport, they usually think it's a reference to a specific league of some sort. Even when they do understand the basics, they still tend to think of both RL and RU as just variants on the sport of 'rugby', in the same way that there are different versions of pool. If RL is described as 'American-style Rugby' and RU as 'English-style Rugby', I guess that would be a lot easier to understand and also to remember which sport is which. It probably wouldn't be as much of a problem in Canada because there's a higher level of interest in RU and I think more people are probably aware that RL and RU are different sports.
There you go!!!Why don't we call it Rugby League Football?
So how would calling rugby league "American Rugby" alleviate any of these problems?
Because Americans think 'rugby league' is referring to a league of rugby rather than a sport, and if you mention 'rugby union' they usually just get confused as hell. At the moment, both codes are just described as 'rugby' and it must be pretty confusing for people who think they have got to grips with the sport only to see it being played another time with completely different rules. And at the moment it's pretty difficult to explain this without getting into complicated terminology. We're not talking about renaming the sport as a whole, just describing it as 'American rugby' in the USA so that it has an identity and people are able to differentiate it from RU and better understand that they are not the same. In Canada and everywhere else it would still be rugby league, as it is now.
