Nicely written article. But what would you suggest as a competition to unite the world in the hopes and fears of sport? A Rugby League World Cup? I'd love to see those Wigan brutes being dispatched to Japan to teach them the textbook of mining brutery.
At last, an article that sees football for what it is. Incidentally the rugby league world cup does exist, the worlds media just chooses to ignore it.
Got to agree with that article. Shame about the rugby league world cup being ignored by the media. It should get some coverage when it happens (2008's the next one i think), let the country know about the sport, and like the last few lines of that article, lets make it the national sport.
It's not just the media that ignore the Rugby League World Cup... the last was due in 2004/5 but was actually called off.
I attended the opening match of the previous one, between the hosts and the champions, and it was the emptiest I've ever seen Twickenham.
League, for all its qualities, is not really a global sport.
I don't think you can claim that rugby is a better sport than football simply because you had the misfortune of spending an afternoon with a group of Nottingham Forest fans. In my experience people that attend football matches generally know very little about football and see it as an opportunity to drink beer and get all shouty. Meanwhile the real football fans spend their weekends being kicked all over a park in deepest darkest Walthamstow, before enjoying a freezing cold shower and a worryingly unspecific meat pie (not at the same time). Why would they want to do that? Beacuse it's the best game in the world.
Dante reserved the 7th circle of hell for schismatics, which is what Leaueists are
Whats the fun of watching 13 identical men run into 13 other identical men, fall over 5 times then punt the ball away.
Sorry, League is even more tedious than football.