SPECTATOR SPORT
Leagues ahead
Frank Keating
LAST WEEKEND, in the five matches of English rugby union's senior club champi- onship, 17 tries were scored. In the corre- sponding seven leading rugby league games, a player touched down for a try on 62 occasions. The weekend before, in the five main English matches, 10 tries were scored (and the same ratio, six in 12, in the senior Welsh union games); the seven championship matches in the rugby league that day produced 42 tries. If the point of rugby is the scoring of tries, then, on the face of it, the league fellows are merrily serving out for game, set and match against their ancient rivals. And these are not fluke differentials — tot up each code's try counts last winter and the ratio is roughly At Twickenham, the rugby union's obvi- ous and dismissive answer to these figures is that their game is one of serious commit- ment, gladiatorial blood and guts, in which a try has to be worked for, schemed and adventurously plotted. Any old game can run in heaps of decorative scores in weary repetition. Take basketball. Or sixers sail- ing all around Sunday cricket. Ours is a proper sport, say union, not promotional glitterbug showbiz geared to television. Yet Twickenham's hitherto fair enough case is suddenly looking ragged, not to say fundamentally flawed. Rugby union, in Britain anyway, has steered itself up a cul- de-sac and is too proud — or smugly com- placent — to manage a three-point turn. Nothing to do with the hardy annuals of turmoil and intrigue over shamateurism. So gormlessly ham-handed and wretched has been the union administration's tinkering with the laws of the game through the last half dozen years that even some leading international players and referees admit to utter confusion as to how they should dare to play their once good and joyful game. As it prepares to celebrate a famous cen- tenary — in 1895, the 'northerners' broke away from the amateur union — rugby league may remain very much the runt of the family in global terms, but it is gloating over its big brother's discomfiture, especial- ly as it coincides with what the league promise will be a coruscating collision of dash and skill when the Australian tourists begin the three-match rubber against Britain at Wembley next Saturday (22 October). This series, say league devotees, will illustrate how rugby should be played — speed and fitness and organised, mighty defences unseen on union paddocks being outsmarted and outfoxed by wit and inven- tion and joie de vivre. Hence, a hatful of tries.
In what, before union's insecurities set in, would have been deemed by Twickenham as a stringing-up offence, this week the coach of the England union side which toured South Africa in the summer, Dick Best, welcomed the arrival of the Aus- tralian league team for the forthcoming series. For union, he said, 'they have arrived in the nick of time', and then he went on to drool about their 'non-stop action, breathtaking handling and support play, and a fitness that we have never seen before, with backs and forwards virtually indistinguishable'.
We could well witness more vintage rugby-as-she-should-be-played in the three league internationals in the next month than we will in union's 20 Five-Nations championship games after Christmas.
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