It all depends on whether you like it or not but personally I think a game of Rugby league can be a hell of a lot more exciting then most of the Football games at times. How many times do you sit and watch west brom vs Sunderland for instance and within 5 minutes of kick off you find yourself browsing the internet on you phone or something along them lines because nothing is happening? I enjoy both but will say at least with Rugby league you tend to get end to end action where you have a good chance of seeing try's been scored as opposed to some of the drab 0-0's we see(think Euro 2016!)
One thing which was good last night was seeing all the kids from West Hull as Mascots, apparently it is a different local kids team/club every week, great way of getting the kids involves, We charge Mascots for the privilege,
I'm not sure how true that was this time round, for the first time in a long time I've been living locally during the build up and I barely heard/saw it mentioned anywhere. In fact a few of my (non-rugby) friends weren't even aware it was on. I know thats not always been the case and in the past its been rammed down peoples throats but this time round it all seemed rather under the radar.
There is a Chelsea fan round my way. Used to go everywhere home and away when they were crap and at the beginning of the good times but has now stopped going as he doesn't like the way the club has gone and being surrounded by tourists and treated, as so many are by their clubs nowadays as a customer rather than a fan. Because he was from down south always referred to as Cockney Mick but he was from Norwich.
I really didn't see that it was in play more? I found the ball for long periods hardly travelled any distance during 6 tackles, loads of school boy handling errors with regards to simple catches and loads of kicking of the ball,something often directed at Union - but League games I have seen are as bad if not worse for kicking the ball. I have genuinely tried watching a few games now and the 6 tackles - stop start stop start. It just did my head in. I played Rugby Union to a fairly decent level and in my opinion it flows far more freely than league. Each to their own, but from the two codes I know which I would much rather watch.
How often do you actually see distance been made in union though, there are no exit metres, the sole aim is to kick it out rather than carry it. Only when they have decent territory do they decide to carry it and then you're lucky to get 20/30 m before an error or penalty leads to a few minutes of nothing while they set the scrum (multiple times) or kick for goal. On average a league player takes more carries and makes more metres per carry than their opposite number in union. I think union is fantastic when you get 10+ phases in an attack on the opposition line, its great to watch, the build up in tension and pressure is really exciting and its something you can't do in league, however it happens far too infrequently for my liking and the rest is a bit negative and with far too much standing around.
What the heck is an exit metre? The difference is Union doesn't stop for some ground shagging, as Aussie Union fans describe what a player does when tackled in League and they struggle to get up and back heel the ball. At least mauls, loose scrums and scrums mean there is some point in positions like hooker, front row and prop in Union. When they say FC or Rovers need a prop or hooker .i wonder why. The ball is put in the back row of the scrum. They may as well go in a huddle to take those players out of it and just throw it straight to the scrum half. Union isn't as strict about the ball going in straight as they used to be but at least it goes against the head occasionally.
When you have the ball close to your own line and a player takes a carry they are making the exit metres. In league you would make up to 5 carries gaining some territory for the kicker, in union you take the bare minimum to create enough space to safely get a kick away. The positions have completely different roles in the two codes, a hooker in league is less concerned with the scrums these days, their main priority is at dummy half where they distribute the ball after the tackle is complete, they are also involved a lot more in defence (Hull Fc's hooker has made more tackles than anyone else in the entire league). As league moved away from contested scrums (a great move) the positions have evolved and don't really resemble what they used to be.
So why do they go through the charade of having scrums if they serve no purpose ? They are redundant to the modern game. When was the last time any side lost possession when they fed the ball into a scrum in RL ? Did you agree with Alex Murphy this week when he said modern RL is 'boring, boring, boring' ?
The scrums now are like a drop ball in football - a way to restart the game. But what it enables, is for all of the backs - the skillfull, speedier players to have a lot of space on the pitch. I dont agree that it is boring - i prefer a boring game of Rugby to a boring game of football. In Football you can set up to get a 0-0 - in Rugby that is impossible, but what Murphy probably means is that there is less of the type of player he was in the modern game due to the athletes that now play the game. The tries in the 4 minute clip below show why i dont think it is boring:
Honestly I agree (with the scrums not the boring comment!), as Wildie said its a way of restarting the game and letting the backs have a run but I wouldn't be bothered if they scrapped them completely, they are just not needed in league. Scrums are the absolute worst part of rugby union, constantly collapsing, having to be reset, usually ending in a penalty, they take all momentum of the game and slow the entire thing down. I'll admit when they eventually bind and you get a push its pretty entertaining but that barely happens, its usually just both teams trying to con the ref into giving them a penalty.
