As a rugby league fan, I compare the differences between rugby league and rugby union to the differences between Pep Guardiola and Sam Allardyce/Tony Pulis.
Pep is rugby league. - playing out from the back, quick attractive football, loads of slick passing, exciting set moves all over the pitch to move defences around, ball-in-play a good amount of time (ball-in-play stats up to 80% with the new rules).
Allardyce/Pulis are rugby union - never play out from the back, hoof it up field whenever you have it near your own line, games stopped for ages with nothing going on apart from a load of people stood around getting cold, turgid attacking structural play, a lack of attacking tactical understanding, grinding out yards through push after push rather than moving the ball and thus defences around, pathetic ball-in-play stats (35%).
But I will still watch union, it’s still quite a good sport to watch, despite its bad points.
Whereas gridiron, on the other hand. Is fucking shit! The ball is in play for an average 11% of the game. What’s the fucking point? And for the 11% of action you get, it’s just a game of obstructions where defenders are stopped from tackling the man with the ball. That’s just pure fucking cheating.
Plus watch the film Concussion with Will Smith; even now years later, the NFL has done nothing to stop the dangerous head first technique in tackling that causes brain damage (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE), and an abhorrent or, should I say, a total absence, of aftercare for anyone with it.
The world should turn its back on the sport until it does something about it. Instead, British Sky TV has dedicated a whole fucking channel to the sport while sports of our own (like both codes of rugby) don’t even get a channel and even have the weekly magazine shows, chat shows and highlights shows scrapped.
