Why Rugby League is better than Football

By: Shaun | September 6th, 2008

Yesterday evening at around 7PM, i was stood on the terraces at Knowsley Road, home to ST Helens rugby league football club. Now, its not your average stadium, Knowsley Road. It doesn’t have the plastic, shiny, sparkling look of your Old Traffords or your Wembleys. Nope, its over 100 years old and has leaky roofs, 500 seats and rotting foundations. But it has something that Wembley or any other flashy new 80,000 seater will never have. Charm and charisma. It is unique and so are the fans. Most of you reading this will not know what Rugby League is all about, but it puts football to shame in many areas.
The game was St Helens v Wigan and on a cold Friday evening with the rain hammering down onto the turf, the place was electric. Chants from both sides, pitch confrontations and a whole lot of bloody good fun and excitement. Those rugby players earn their money with the amount of body-breaking tackles that they go through during 80 tough, all-action minutes. Its a lot like NFL, only more flowing and forceful. The final score was 16-16, pretty rare for a rugby match to end in a draw but well worth the £11 entry fee. Season tickets at St Helens cost from as little as £40. Some people would pay that amount of money to be able to drink Sir Alex’s piss.
And thats one of the key differences between rugby league and football. Money. The foreign investment helps push up the prices. Like Mr Arab in his Shell Petrol station gives a toss about the Manchester City fan who is struggling to pay his morgage due to the global credit crunch. These footballers who get paid £200,000 a week to run around for a bit, dive, put a few barely-identifiable words into a so-called sentence during an interview, put on a suit, swear, abuse the ref and then drive home to their mansions in their Ferrari’s, whilst stopping off to a) beat up someone outside McDonalds, b) Go and bet illegally on a coming match or c) go sleep with some old granny.

Lets go watch some rugby.

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Comments  

• j |  September 6th, 2008 at 10:27 am

  
  
  

  Great to see you enjoy League as well. Watch quite a bit of it myself. However I just wanted to mention you might want to make sure your title reflects “American” Football because it was confusing when I read your title. Go Rhinos!

  Posted from Bulgaria

  

• Forsaken |  September 7th, 2008 at 3:49 am

  
  
  

  Rugby (League and Union) is quite strong in my country. I also appreciate your opinion, rugby is more entertaining from a spectators point of view…

  Posted from Australia

  

• Rob |  September 8th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

  
  
  

  Rugby League is Rugby Union for girls!

  Posted from United States

  

• David |  September 9th, 2008 at 6:11 am

  
  
  

  Rugby is great no doubt, but the reason that it isn’t as money driven as football is because less people watch it.

  When/If it becomes as popular as football it will likely be as commercial.

  The challenge facing football at the moment is how to harness commercialisation and keep the game competitive, entertaining AND affordable.

  Posted from United Kingdom

  

• Rob |  September 9th, 2008 at 7:45 am

  
  
  

  Its also because it was semi-pro untill fairly recently – at least Union was, not sure about league. So its only recently had a bit of time to grow. Its also always been a more middle-class game, it was invented in a public school, so its never going to have the mass, working class appeal football has.

  Posted from United States

  

• Hopos |  December 16th, 2008 at 4:38 am

  
  
  

  Íàèëó÷øàÿ äîñêà äëÿ ïîñòèíãà îáúÿâëåíèé î
  Âàøèõ ïîêóïêàõ ïðîäàæàõ è ïîèñêàõ òîâàðîâ è óñëóã.
  Âû ìîæåòå áûñòðî íàéòè èìåííî òî, ÷òî íåîáõîäèìî èìåííî
  Âàì â äàííûé ìîìåíò!

  Posted from United States

  

• Robert Cowden |  January 11th, 2009 at 5:32 pm

  
  
  

  For the most part I agree. I am a north american. I hate the stop start bull of american football. However I love rugby league and soccer. I think the EPL could use more control and touch on the ball and the top 4 buy alot of championships. Well soccer has gotten very commercial in England it could be worse just look at the specatacle that we have in the states called NFL. By the way my favorite Rugby League team is the Canterburry Bulldogs. We also have semi pro rugby league in the states but corporate giants like the NFL supress it all they can they know given a fair shot people would prefer rugby league. Anyway have a good one.

  Posted from United States

  

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