Steve Deane: Last time rugby fought itself, league was born

Steve Deane

We've seen it before, this fundamental philosophical divide over the future of rugby.

We didn't see it first-hand last time, of course, because none of us were alive in 1895, when 22 northern English clubs took their balls home and went off to form what is now league.

But rugby has certainly experienced the same geographically based, economically driven divide we are seeing today.

In 1895, the dispute was over player payments and the formation of competitive leagues. Battle lines were drawn along a north-south divide and along class lines. Almost 114 years later, not a lot has changed.

This time it is the south, in the form of the Southern Hemisphere, that is being driven by economic necessity to push for changes to the game; to back the adoption of the experimental law variations (ELVs). It may be the north that is resisting but, with the Northern Hemisphere lobby headquartered squarely in London, it's really just a recycled version of the 1895 southern toffs who are doing their damnedest to fend off change.

The reason for the division over rugby's laws goes much deeper than the north favouring rules that suit their lumbering forwards and the south preferring changes that favour the superior athleticism of their backs. Despite what many seem to think, the ruck over the rules has rugger-all to do with competitive advantage.

The bottom line is that the south, particularly New Zealand and Australia, are locked in a grim battle for bums on seats, be they in the stands or in front of the pay TV screens. Right now, the Warriors pull bigger crowds than the Blues while, in Wellington, the local soccer team often draws more fans than the provincial rugby team. Rugby in these parts is in a scrap for the entertainment dollar and it knows it. The only way it can hold its own in that scrap is if the product is compelling. At the moment, the on-field spectacle is far from it, and the game's administrators know it.

The north is under no such pressure. Rugby in England, in particular, isn't and never has been about entertainment. It is about class. English folk who grow up in certain areas and go to public (the curious British name for private schools) will more than likely be into rugger. Those who left school at 15 to help their dads push barrows of oysters around the East End will probably prefer soccer.

Plenty of the former will end up working in the City and will wander down to Twickers on a regular basis regardless of the dross routinely served up by England.

As Kiwis who've OE'd in London know, Twickers is more about the occasion than the contest.

But a regularly packed-out Twickenham and a bunch of heavyweight commercial partnerships ensure the RFU's coffers stay topped up. There is certainly no economic imperative for change in England.

As for the clubs, many are the play-things of rich men for the whom the presence of a couple of thousand more fans here or there matters little. Besides, many of the clubs have poky little grounds that couldn't deal with large crowds anyway. Bath and Sale, for instance, have grounds with a capacity under 11,000.

Not only do the British not need to change, they also don't want to. Many of their rugger fans like the game just the way it is, and considered the last World Cup marvellously compelling and entertaining.

Much like in 1895, then, one camp desperately needs change, the other doesn't want a bar of it.

But, if the northern lobby continues to frustrate attempts to make the game more palatable to southern audiences, as it did recently by voting as a bloc to nix some of the key ELVs, it will leave southern administrators with a stark choice - toe the line and watch the game here wither, or stick their proverbial fingers up at the IRB and make the changes we deem necessary.

A failure to cater to the demands of the modern sporting public could be disastrous for rugby in these parts. If it doesn't adapt, it will be the only football code not to do so. League, for instance, initially countered the stifling defence resulting from players' ever-increasing athleticism and fitness by shifting from a 5m to 10m offside line. This year's switch to two referees has also increased the speed of the game. The result of both changes is to increase the levels of fatigue on players, opening up space for more attacking and exciting play.

Soccer continues to tinker with its off-side rule but has mainly relied on technological advances. The provision of bowling green-like playing surfaces and the use of lightweight synthetic balls has produced a quantum leap in quality. The stunning goals regularly scored today would have been once-a-decade affairs not all that long ago.

Rugby, by comparison, has spent 18 months dithering over whether a maul can be sacked.

Rugby's sloth-like response to a changing world should be no surprise. We are talking about a sport that took 100 years to realise the Northern Union was right and accept professionalism.

During the 100 years' war between the rugby codes it was often said by supercilious union types that, when the endgame finally arrived, there would be only one rugby. League would be the game to go. Leaguies must be enjoying the irony that union is on the brink of another schism. One rugby? Three seems more likely.