What's new
The Front Row Forums

Register a free account today to become a member of the world's largest Rugby League discussion forum! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

rugby league at the olympics

T

Juniors
Messages
559
since the world sevens has been abolished do you think it would be an idea
to stage an olympic event every 4 years like the world sevens concept.
criteria:
teams from any country may enter

7 a side(similiar sevens)
4 pools of teams to play each other with top teams in each pool to play for medals(winners go to play for gold/silver losses play off for bronze and 4th)

you must be under 23 and played less than 50 first grade or professional games(nswrl not included)

this may give league an international agenda from which to launch and will hopefully make international league stronger? thoughts.....
 

pcpp

Juniors
Messages
2,266
Although I'd love to, it'd never work.

How many nations play rugby league that have a decent chance of winning? 3. Theres the medals already decided.
 

freeridermx

Juniors
Messages
395
yeah but sevens is a lot different the normal 13 a side leage i would like to see it will need something with the bastards of clubs to worried bout themselves instead of the game. anything is better then nothing
 

SpaceMonkey

Immortal
Messages
37,555
If Rugby of any sort gets into the Olympics it will be Union Sevens. The best thing for League to do would be to approach Union and suggest tthat both sports put their efforts into getting Sevens in on the understanding that teams will be selected from players in both codes. League doesn't have a hope any other way.
 

t-ba

Post Whore
Messages
55,535
SpaceMonkey said:
If Rugby of any sort gets into the Olympics it will be Union Sevens. The best thing for League to do would be to approach Union and suggest tthat both sports put their efforts into getting Sevens in on the understanding that teams will be selected from players in both codes. League doesn't have a hope any other way.

I'd say neither have a hope. If tickets sell as poorly for the Next olympics in the free world (It's an inevitability there'll be full house in China), I reckon the much anticipated "rationalisation" of the Olympics will begin. And not a second early imho!
 

Anonymous

Juniors
Messages
46
Never happen.

Even with that under 23-leass than 50 first grade games criteria, you'd still have awesome teams representing Australia, NZ and England.
 

Tidus_Raider

Bench
Messages
2,576
RL will struggle to get into the goodwill games let alone the Commonwealth and Olympic games. Not enough international competition.

Can you say 'gold metal certainties'?
 

eagle_eye

Juniors
Messages
88
if cricket and rugby, which are played alot more on an international stage can't even get in, how would league?
 

eloquentEEL

First Grade
Messages
8,065
funnily enough, Union was in the Olympics for a little while... I discovered this when researching the following article for the Forum 7's competition:

eels2win said:
League at the Olympics

greeks_romans298.jpg


Imagine Rugby League on the world stage as an Olympic sport. Now there’s a thought which would make today’s Union administrators cream their pants, and something the AFL could never aspire to, with their international competition limited to a single Irish opponent in a match showcasing the bastardisation of two codes. I promise to get to the modern Olympics by the end of this article, but in the meantime, with the Olympics returning to Athens this year, what if I were to tell you that Rugby League was played in Athens at the ancient Olympics?

Okay, so it wasn’t called Rugby League, but the ancient Greeks did play a couple of ball games with remarkable similarities to League. Harpastron literally translates as “handball”, and Episkyro/Pheninda was played with the hands and feet, on a footy sized field, with 12 players a side. If the Olympics were opened up internationally back then, it wouldn’t have been long before many other nations were competing. The Romans combined Harpastron and Episkyro, and called it Harpastum. The game’s popularity spread along with the expansion of the Roman Empire. Achilles would have been a mighty fine player, except rumour has it he suffered a career ending injury before he reached his prime.

They would have also faced stiff competition from Chinese soldiers who played a game called Tsu Chu as part of their military training which included “gladiator-style” gang tackling. They would have been good athletes with skills to burn. Their goal kicking especially, would put the likes of El Masri to shame, as the goal in Tsu Chu was a hole in a net strung between two bamboo poles, 10 metres high. The Japanese also had a game around the same time called Kemari. Their defence would have been suspect, and they would have got hammered when they had the ball, but they would have been able to put on some impressive tries, passing the ball like a hot potato, reminiscent of the Warriors in their prime. It is believed that the Chinese actually did play the Japanese in what may have been the very first international. The Australian Aboriginals would have certainly had a competitive kicking game as well, and been very comfortable under the high ball, with their Marn Grook experience, kicking and catching balls made of possum skin.

Finally, if you wanted to see some passion in the competition, you wouldn’t need to go further than the Aztecs. They had a ball game called Tlachtli that involved a lot of skill and was physical enough to warrant helmets and kneepads, but the passion came from trying to avoid the consequences of losing the match, ie. being sacrificed to the Gods. Of course, this may mean very limited opportunity to develop skills, but if you were up against a team of veterans who had survived a few years in the sport, look out!

It wasn’t until later that the Roman game developed into rugby-like offshoots, such as: Calcio in Italy, where play was paused and resumed if the ball stopped moving; Choule in France, where the aim was to take the ball the length of the field to score and games involved a fair bit of biff; Mob Football in England (which may have also evolved from the Welsh/Scandinavian games of Criapan/Caid/Knappan) where the biff was taken to an even higher level with property damaged in matches between entire villages where players could use any means possible to score.

Eventually Mob Football developed into Rugby Union, which in turn developed into League, which brings us back to the present day and the modern Olympics. In all fairness, Union was included as an Olympic sport until being axed for the 1928 Olympiad, never to return.

Step in Rugby League, a game where “they decided to change certain rules to create a more exciting game that would attract spectators” (BBC). International Rugby League is currently somewhat prone to ridicule, but with development around the globe, League has a half decent chance of eventually undoing the damage caused by Union and being admitted into the modern Olympics. However, it is still quite a while away, and sorry to the traditionalists, but it will probably have to be the Sevens format of the game, due to: tight scheduling; the need for extreme levels of excitement; and the re-emergence of the World Sevens as an annual event.

-> 734 words <-

References:
http://www.footballnetwork.org/dev/historyoffootball
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Football
http://www.rugbyfootballhistory.com/originsofrugby.htm
http://www.rugbyfootballhistory.com/olympics.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sportacademy/bsp/hi/rugby_league/rules/history/html/formation.stm
 
Messages
13,777
i remember when sydney first got the olympics, soon after i saw an ad for it and it had some rugby on it so i thought rugby league will be in the olympics so me and my mate practiced for it every lunch time at school haha
 

paulyt

Juniors
Messages
379
eagle_eye said:
if cricket and rugby, which are played alot more on an international stage can't even get in, how would league?
They play cricket in the commonwealth games though.
 

Razor

Coach
Messages
10,077
funnily enough, Union was in the Olympics for a little while... I discovered this when researching the following article for the Forum 7's competition:

Cricket used to be in the Olympics as well - just once in 1900. GBR won gold, France won silver. Those 2 were the only sides that entered so no bronze was rewarded.
 

Tighthead

Guest
Messages
3,176
Rugby union 7s is in the Commonwealth games - I think Spacemonkey's suggestion of picking a combined RU/RL team for this event would be worthwhile.

BTW - ru used to be an olympic sport played in 1900, 1908, 1920 and 1924. Only 3 teams entered in 1924, and USA won the gold, making them ru's defending olympic rugby champions.
 

Tupac Shakur

First Grade
Messages
5,701
We would dominate the sport though if it was in the Olympics and there would only be the same countries getting the medals.

Gold - Australia
Silver - Great Britain
Bronze - New Zealand.
 

Latest posts

Top