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Rugby League is a better game to play and watch says Gavin Henson


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8 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

Exactly, big money. He's just towing the line.

And you all fell for it!!

I guess I just have too much faith in people But I suppose the promise of £100, a pie and a pint and all the ralgex you want will turn anyones head.

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The view of Jonathan Davies:

GAVIN Henson can help rugby league finally crack Wales – even though he has crossed codes 12 years after he maybe should have.

For having him at West Wales Raiders can show kids there is an alternative to ‘dour’ rugby union, believes Jonathan Davies.

Dual-code rugby legend Jonathan Davies believes Gavin Henson's arrival at West Wales Raiders can spark new interest in rugby league
And team-mate Rangi Chase cannot wait to play alongside the man he used to pick on a computer game!

RU legend Henson will step out for the League One side against Widnes in the Challenge Cup on Sunday after a meeting with the owners about becoming an ambassador grew into him playing for them.

Davies - who starred in both codes and hails from Llanelli, where the Raiders play - believes seeing the pub owner in nearby St Brides Major in the 13-a-side game can spur others to make the jump.

He said: “It’s raising awareness that kids can go and try rugby league. If they don’t make the regional sides, they don’t want to play union.

“And the regional game is very dour. Internationals are great but below that, players look like they don’t enjoy it.

“If they don’t make the regional sides, they go to a semi-pro side, why not a semi-pro rugby league side? There’s a lot of talent at that level, so maybe league clubs should look at that area.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/14394146/jonathan-davies-says-gavin-hensons-code-switch-can-attract-players-from-dour-ru/

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5 hours ago, fighting irish said:

We've been up this road before Rocket.

Can't remember who kicked it off, or when but I referred to is as ''Middleweight league'' say with a 13 or 14 stone weight limit.

As you say, the lighter weights in boxing are far more lively affairs, faster and more skillful.

Middleweight Rugby League could be very entertaining to watch and I reckon draw in a lot of players who are just put off by the BiffGiants.

I think its worth a go. 

I think I recall you even mentioning it yourself once Irish, I wonder why the idea is such a non-starter. Do people think it is discriminatory, would discount too many people out of the game, too difficult to administer or would we just have the same play as we have now with just smaller players.

I wonder whether coaches have just decided the fastest way to get from point A to point B is a straight line, where point B is the opposite teams try line and A their current position and this is why we see so much one out or two off the ruck running.

I know some argue for the return of the 5 metre rule to encourage more creative play to break down defences, however would that just lead to more kicking as the easiest way to make ground, bit like union with its` 0 metre rule, ironically with union I find that the kicking, when they don`t kick it out, tends to break up defences and lead to more open field running and play, its about the only time I feel union has an advantage over League as a spectacle.

I think there is a lot in your second last paragraph, I got to a bit of local Group League and even at that level they generally are really big blokes right across the field, a second division with a player size cap might get a lot of smaller blokes who aren`t naturally halves or five-eights, hookers etc. were the smaller blokes traditionally play, into the game.

Any way as you say Irish, it would be interesting to see it experimented with.

 

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1 hour ago, Damien said:

The view of Jonathan Davies:

GAVIN Henson can help rugby league finally crack Wales – even though he has crossed codes 12 years after he maybe should have.

For having him at West Wales Raiders can show kids there is an alternative to ‘dour’ rugby union, believes Jonathan Davies.

Dual-code rugby legend Jonathan Davies believes Gavin Henson's arrival at West Wales Raiders can spark new interest in rugby league
And team-mate Rangi Chase cannot wait to play alongside the man he used to pick on a computer game!

RU legend Henson will step out for the League One side against Widnes in the Challenge Cup on Sunday after a meeting with the owners about becoming an ambassador grew into him playing for them.

Davies - who starred in both codes and hails from Llanelli, where the Raiders play - believes seeing the pub owner in nearby St Brides Major in the 13-a-side game can spur others to make the jump.

He said: “It’s raising awareness that kids can go and try rugby league. If they don’t make the regional sides, they don’t want to play union.

“And the regional game is very dour. Internationals are great but below that, players look like they don’t enjoy it.

“If they don’t make the regional sides, they go to a semi-pro side, why not a semi-pro rugby league side? There’s a lot of talent at that level, so maybe league clubs should look at that area.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/14394146/jonathan-davies-says-gavin-hensons-code-switch-can-attract-players-from-dour-ru/

"RU legend", really? 😂 

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Was looking at BBC sport earlier and Big Gav is in 3 of the top 5 RL stories.

It's funny how a lot of people have said that they'd love to see more "names" in the sport - people who achieve wider recognition outside of the regular fanbase. You've now got someone who's brought interest to a bottom-of-the-table League 1 side, and yet some people are upset because... increased interest in the sport is a bad thing? Gavin Henson is not the right sort of person for rugby league traditionalists? I don't get it. When was the last time you saw BBC Sport writing about League 1 sides? It even got mentioned at half-time in the Wales vs France Six Nations game!

I for one hope that Henson goes well and that his half-back pairing with Chase brings some success for West Wales. Even if Henson doesn't end up being a great league player, he's played at the highest level in union and that level of professionalism will help the other West Wales lads. Since becoming West Wales Raiders, they've won 1 league game out of 48...

I sometimes wonder if people actually like this sport and want it to do well. I honestly can't see how anyone could see someone high profile saying something positive about the sport and think "well that's bad news."

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4 hours ago, Keith989 said:

"RU legend", really? 😂 

Depends what you man by legend, apart from a couple of Ex junior RL players in the England squad he's just about the only RU player from any nation I can name currently capable of pulling on a shirt.

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Gavin Henson's debut also got a mention at the end of the Wales v France game last night on BBC1. It was Inverdale as well - his teeth would have been well-gritted.  The pundit (Wales centre, Jonathan Davies?) said he'll have a tough time aged 39 as Rugby League is a more attritional game

Good publicity on prime time BBC1, perhaps a few more from Wales will now watch the game today

How can anyone complain at that?

 

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39 minutes ago, Hopping Mad said:

I disagree with JD. His “great” RU internationals are as dour as the regional game.

Big crowds, big stadiums and a good atmosphere help greatly with perception. As does the hype. The actual games are as dour but everything else helps greatly with perception.

I think Football and the Premier League is also a great example of that too. Without the big crowds and great atmospheres its like watching a completely different game and a different standard.

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9 minutes ago, Damien said:

Big crowds, big stadiums and a good atmosphere help greatly with perception. As does the hype. The actual games are as dour but everything else helps greatly with perception.

I think Football and the Premier League is also a great example of that too. Without the big crowds and great atmospheres its like watching a completely different game and a different standard.

I agree.

I've probably told this story on here before but, in this context, it bears repeating. When ex-Wales RU cap Rob Ackerman played for Whitehaven (back in the 80s), he took a couple of his new team-mates, local Cumbrian lads, to a Wales RU game at the Arms Park, Cardiff. One of them later told me that, in the pub the evening before the match, everybody impressed on them how much they'd enjoy the atmosphere. Nobody, he said, talked about the actual game. Sure enough, said Rob's team-mate, the atmosphere was fantastic. But the quality of the rugby was terrible.

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Just now, JohnM said:

Just listened to him on the Dave Woods RL podcast on BBC Sounds.  I think I'll turn it on on all my devices - currently 6 -  so the BBC trafficmasters will se how popular the podcast is.

 

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On 20/03/2021 at 10:49, The Rocket said:

There was hopes that the introduction of the new six-again rules would bring the little blokes into the game and I know it is early days but I`ve starting to get a feeling that while we might start to see a couple of faster smaller blokes in key positions the game is still going to be dominated by bigger players, they might be a bit more mobile and aerobically fit so they can stat out there longer but still mostly big blokes.

I saw an article(which I wanted to post but couldn`t find) on the Warriors and Knights forwards and bench players this weekend and they were a bunch of giants on both sides. It seems there is probably just too much value in big blokes that can make yardage for coaches to give them up.

I wonder if the only way we are going to get back to the type of game you`re talking about is to either put a cap on player size or the number of players above a certain size.

I was thinking about the analogy with boxing where the lighter weight divisions are generally much more lively affairs with a lot more punches thrown compared to the heavier divisions where they can be a bit more like slug-fests. Perhaps this is were League has come to, we need to get back to those `lighter divisions` to get back to that lively attacking play you talk about. They have `weigh-ins` in boxing perhaps we need to have something similar in League. 

 

Liking your suggestion regarding size restriction (though how that would be enforced I’d imagine would be an issue). 

 

On 20/03/2021 at 13:02, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

He's saying union is boring compared to league.... On a Six nations weekend 

It's delightful 

He’s saying what I (and many others like Jerry Guscott) have been saying for ages... the timing could have been better though as the six nations games this weekend were uncharacteristically good (not as eye catching as the past, but still a huge step up from the normal drudgery).

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18 hours ago, zylya said:

I sometimes wonder if people actually like this sport and want it to do well. I honestly can't see how anyone could see someone high profile saying something positive about the sport and think "well that's bad news."

I’m an outsider on here and I like a very specific kind of RL (open, attacking, flair etc.). I’ve advocated it becoming more geared towards this (how it used to be really) as I believe it could become immensely popular, especially so considering how attritional RU has become. Growing up in the UK most kids are used to watching Zidane, Ronaldo, Messi etc. where flair is lauded so there just isn’t the appreciation for the rough and tumble stuff. If you grew up where the opposite is the case then the physical, brutish stuff would be appreciated a lot more. RU folk light up when they talk about the swashbuckling Wales team of the 70s (Gareth Edwards, JPR etc.) and yet they have allowed their sport to completely deviate from that to become a stale, forward dominated, attritional, risk averse game played in an overcrowded field full of limited gym monkeys. 

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4 hours ago, DC77 said:

Liking your suggestion regarding size restriction (though how that would be enforced I’d imagine would be an issue). 

Yes the more I think about it the more I like it.

Over here and probably the same where you are batches of juniors come through the ranks every year, generally up to 18`s, after that only the best go on to play in the open age teams. The `best` usually means the biggest and the strongest, those who will eventually be able to force their way into the opens side, there may be a few smaller players in key positions but the majority will be the larger stronger kids.

If there was an Open`s competition that limited player size to say 13 or 14 stone about 80-90 kg`s many of those surplus juniors and perhaps some older chaps may be enticed to continue playing.

Over on the `Rugby League Regrets` thread recently there was a conversation about how many blokes and blokes who knew blokes who had played their last game at age 18, I read it with interest because I was one also, I remember very clearly at the time weighing up the decision whether to approach the local Open age team and after much agonising deciding against it. The facts are they may not have wanted me I was about 72kg or 11 stone at the time.

A weight restricted competition may have been a much more viable opportunity.

Boxing was clever enough to realise long ago that if you have different weight divisions you have more participants in the sport, there is no use putting up a 10 stone bloke against a 16 stone bloke, you won`t have a fight, but if you give 10 stone blokes the opportunity to fight 10 stone blokes you`re much more likely to have a contest. Why can`t League have a similar thing, at least at amateur level, to keep people in the game.

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1 hour ago, Spidey said:

Given that the player pool in RL isn’t that big putting restrictions on it would be a bad idea

Not at all, it wouldn`t effect open age open weight divisions anyone could still play regardless of weight or age if they are good enough and want to.

 I`m talking about that step up from when the mass of players come out of 18`s or juniors and don`t make the cut into the open ranks or people who just don`t want to play against 16 or 18 stone blokes. This would be run as a completely separate competition where ever clubs could field a team say in a 11 0r 12 stone limit. 

If most clubs are anything like around here they may have First Grade, Reserves and under 12 stones for example.

I think you would find that there is a lot of blokes out there who may well pull the boots on, or continue playing if they don`t make the grade  stepping up from juniors who would participate.

I suppose the obvious question is what happens to the 16 stone bloke who doesn`t make the top grades, as far I can see this wouldn`t affect them, they could still play in open age open weight lower grades.

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35 minutes ago, The Rocket said:

Not at all, it wouldn`t effect open age open weight divisions anyone could still play regardless of weight or age if they are good enough and want to.

 I`m talking about that step up from when the mass of players come out of 18`s or juniors and don`t make the cut into the open ranks or people who just don`t want to play against 16 or 18 stone blokes. This would be run as a completely separate competition where ever clubs could field a team say in a 11 0r 12 stone limit. 

If most clubs are anything like around here they may have First Grade, Reserves and under 12 stones for example.

I think you would find that there is a lot of blokes out there who may well pull the boots on, or continue playing if they don`t make the grade  stepping up from juniors who would participate.

I suppose the obvious question is what happens to the 16 stone bloke who doesn`t make the top grades, as far I can see this wouldn`t affect them, they could still play in open age open weight lower grades.

Maybe its different in Australia but I feel that this wouldn't have much difference here. I think many of these types of players are lost long before 18 and that people drift from the game at 18 for a whole host of reasons. That's not to say that weight restrictions at youth levels wouldn't be good, I just think that once we get to 18 size differences would be well down the list of why people drift away at that age.

I actually think something like an u21s league may have some more mileage where people can continue playing with their friends, people of a more similar age and maintain the bonds that have developed for years. I have practically seen more or less entire u18s teams disappear from the game because they just don't transition to open age. It would allow a better transition to open age and would also help with size differentials too.

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