RL Attitudes to other football codes

[Griff]

Apart from Rugby League, I watch a fair bit of GAA during the county season.

I don't watch much soccer and no RU, AFL or NFL.  I prefer CFL to NFL (wider pitch, more options before the snap, three downs instead of four, they get on with the game better, goal posts in the correct place, less teams to watch).  I'll probably watch the ten minute summaries of all the CFL games and the Grey Cup in full.

Edited October 25, 2024 by Griff

[Futtocks]

Football: Over the years, I've drifted away from the sport. While never an avid fan, I'd never miss MotD and I'd be aware of significant clubs, players and news stories. I don't have any negative feelings towards Football, but it's rare that a game will hold my attention these days.

American Football: I am an occasional follower, mainly for the "on the road" games in London, so I'm not staying up 'til crazily late hours.

Aussie Rules: I remember the novelty factor when Channel 4 launched and had all sorts of sports like Sumo, Kabaddi and AFL. But it's a sport that works better (for me) in highlights form.

Rugby Union: I'm rather enjoying the sight of the code's collision with cold, hard reality. Does that count?

[JohnM]

1 hour ago, M j M said:

I use soccer partly because I've been brainwashed by consuming so much Australian sport content and American news. It also makes sense as it's got about as much right to call itself football as rugby union has to call itself rugby.

The term soccer is of English origin, nothing to do with Aus and the US, and is still correctly in widespread use in England, and long may that continue. ...

[StandOffHalf]

10 minutes ago, Griff said:

Apart from Rugby League, I watch a fair bit of GAA during the county season.

I don't watch much soccer and no RU, AFL or NFL.  I prefer CFL to NFL (wider pitch, more options before the snap, three downs instead of four, they get on with the game better, goal posts in the correct place, less teams to watch).  I'll probably watch the ten minute summaries of all the CFL games and the Grey Cup in full.

I think Gaelic Football has been made almost unwatchable over the last few years by the soccer-like trend towards holding onto possession, over taking risks and trying long passes.

[JDR]

RU – I fell into this game almost by accident as it was the only football code played at my high school. I was quite good at it despite being a late starter and played at a good amateur level until my late 20s. I don’t watch regularly other than 6N matches which have a good buzz about them. I’ll watch some highlights etc when I’ve got a few minutes to kill.

Soccer – I quite enjoyed playing it, it’s my youngest lad’s main sport [though he showed ability with a rugby ball none of his mates play unfortunately, could have been a mobile hard-working prop]. I don’t like the culture above the community level. I quite enjoyed British teams doing well in the early 80s, there was something great about teams from working class areas achieving at the highest level.

Gridiron – can be a great game, I drift in and out of watching bits of it. A full match is a long watch for sure!

AFL – meh! I’ve tried watching it, and it’s probably my least favourite code.

Gaelic Football, other Celtic games – good fun, I’ve just never had a team to follow, or known of a player that required me to take an interest. Definitely better than AFL for me, loads of potential I think.

I still rate RL the top spectator code.

[ricky]

I love AFL, I have a subscription to watch it online. Its Australian-ness is an important part of the appeal for me, including the vast crowds* and the very dry sense of humour of the TV commentators.

I played Union for six years of my childhood, I can't bear watching it these days, it's lost the plot. Not that I much watched it back then, wqs always much more interested in football.

So.... am I still allowed to attend RL matches here in Yorkshire? 

*this year, 90,000 people turned up to watch Richmond getting a totally predictable mid-season hammering, just because it was their best player's 300th game.

[Liverpool Rover]

Soccer - I used to watch it all the time but I can hardly watch a full game unless it is a match I really want to watch. Most of the time I have no idea that England are playing I see the result or notice on the Sky EPG.

NFL - I don’t have time to watch every game on TV but will usually watch one of the Sunday games. It’s such a strategic game and played by some of the best athletes around and watching a QB move his team downfield when they need a touchdown at the end of a game can make for great viewing. When watching a game it does seem like it goes quicker than 3 hours.

AFL - I used to watch the highlights show when it was on Channel 4 back in the day and watched bits of some matches but don’t watch it anymore.

RU - I might try to watch a big England or a Lions test match and that’s it.

[Big Picture]

3 hours ago, Adelaide Tiger said:

Football!!!! Not Soccer.  Followed Leeds Utd since 1970.  Watch all their games when on TV.  Although not watched a league game with two neutral teams for over 20 years.  The EPL is just a glorified 5-a-side game with no contact allowed. Would love to have seen what Norman Hunter and Big Jack would have done if a latter day Prima Donna started showboating in front of them!

With the FIFA World Cup being in North America in a couple of years, you'll be hearing their sport called soccer plenty, and the millions of us in many countries who all call it that are never going to stop either, so you'd best get used to it.  Soccer it is, for the perfectly good reasons pointed out here by @JohnM.

[RBKnight]

1 hour ago, HawkMan said:

I'm sure if RL coaches stood on the touchline berating the refs,  and being generally controversial and confrontational RL would see the benefit in heightened media interest.

Another great case for bringing back "Rugby League Raw" 

Rugby League Raw - Wikipedia

[N2022]

I'm a general sports fan who grew up in the SW mainly with soccer. Union was the rugby code at school and I ended up coaching quite a bit through working as a teacher. Worth noting that league seems to have minimal presence in schools, with RU the default not only in the south but northern grammars, independent schools and leafy lane comps. Perhaps small pockets of RL schools in Hull and the NW, a few in smaller W Yorks towns, was the impression I got. But that could have been missing something through being on a school with a Union circuit that only once, as I recall across a decade, entered a League comp. Even if boys play league at the weekend it's more likely any provision in school will expect them to play RU. Then there's the many schools that teach skills in Games but don't run fixtures for whatever reason.

My league interest started with the tv in the 80s, then no real contact until moving to Leeds, where I watched a few Rhinos games and internationals. Playing Tag was a link to RL culture too, as teammates played it at the weekend.

I love the whole 6 nations rivalry, and show games like Barbarians, but recognise that kick tennis and 6 minute scrums are a bore. Basically, for me RL is a more consistent positive experience where RU can be exciting on a good day, tedium another. 

As for other codes, I don't regularly watch Aussie Rules, but it's OK. NFL is good but I prefer College Football. Canadian football fine.

Soccer I'm rapidly going off, as it seems ever more contentious, with toxic crowds, blame-everyone-else managers, and the players more dishonest backed by irritating pundits. Just hope the oval ball codes can keep some integrity.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

1 hour ago, daz39 said:

Give me Semi-pro, non league football any day where fans drink pitchside and mix and enjoy each others company and the players want to score goals and win matches, it's affordable and honest and it's like watching football back in the 70's and 80's still.

This right here is why I love going down non league football. Fans of both clubs just stand on the touchline together having a laugh and a joke and are there because they love football, no other reason. I have never once seen any hooliganism or trouble between opposing fans at this level of football. The players on the pitch are there because they want to play football, nothing else. Stewards and clubhouse staff and the woman in the ticket booth and every other staff member are all volunteers who are helping out because they love their football team and their local community.

[unapologetic pedant]

1 hour ago, HawkMan said:

AFL - I've tried getting into this, but I just can't. The skill is minimal,  handling skills poor and just booting the ball isn't particularly thrilling. But like Basketball the ease of scoring is a big turn off for me. Its so frequent it just loses all meaning. I'm sure the Aussies would love soccer if the goals were twenty feet high and fifteen feet wide with no goalkeeper,  and scores  of 20/ 15.

Seen through the prism of Soccer, the AFL style of play is like 80s Wimbledon or Jack Charlton's Ireland.

If handball and offside were legalized, Soccer versions of AFL full forwards would be players like John Fashanu, Niall Quinn, Tony Cascarino. 

[unapologetic pedant]

2 hours ago, Barley Mow said:

On the use of the word soccer - I remember my grandad saying that in Leeds association football was always referred to as 'soccer' and RL as 'football' up until the point when United became successful in the mid-60s (and I suppose pulled clear of the three RL teams in terms of popularity).

From that point it was association football that was 'football' and RL 'rugby'.

Depending on the commentator, used to be that a bowler at Headingley could be running in from either "The Football Stand End" or "The Rugby Stand End". 

[Eddie]

3 hours ago, gingerjon said:

Back in the day when this forum was a lot busier, there was an anonymous poll for what was people's second favourite sport - on the assumption that RL was everyone's first.

Rugby Union was comfortably the winner.

Wow, I’d love it if that poll was run again. For the record mine is darts, and if darts wasn’t included it would be football. 

[Barley Mow]

3 minutes ago, unapologetic pedant said:

Depending on the commentator, used to be that a bowler at Headingley could be running in from either "The Football Stand End" or "The Rugby Stand End". 

It was officially the Football Stand End. Started getting called the Rugby Stand End in the early 2000s. After the re-build you'd often hear them call it the Emerald Stand End until Emerald withdrew sponsorship - now Howard Stand End, although Football Stand and Rugby Stand are used along with that depending on the commentator. I'm not sure if YCCC ever officially changed it.

[EggFace]

4 hours ago, JohnM said:

Easy-peasy. According to quite a few on here,all sports, especially soccer.  are rubbish, played by over-paid, under-performing and cheating softy no marks. Whilst in my view most fans take our sport on its own merits, some fans of rugby league seem to demonstrate some sort of inverted snobbery.

The word "soccer" is derived from the term "association football"12. The term "soccer" was first used in England as university slang. It was originally spelled "socca" and later "socker" before becoming "soccer". The -er suffix was popular slang at the Rugby School and Oxford University and used for all sorts of nouns the young men shortened. The term "soccer" was used to distinguish association football from other forms of football, such as rugby football or American football.

What about Soca.

[gingerjon]

18 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Wow, I’d love it if that poll was run again. For the record mine is darts, and if darts wasn’t included it would be football. 

Your wish is my command ...

[Fly-By-TheWire]

There are only two sports where the ball is consistently in play.   RL and Soccer.   I can't get in to watching soccer (as much fun and inclusive as it is to play - you don't need to fit a mould) because nothing really happens when the ball is in play, apart from one or two ecstatic moments as a goal is scored.   RL on the other hand, regularly builds up to near-scoring moments which keeps the interest there.   And when a team isn't near the line you get the occasional massive defensive hit.

I do feel we've lost some of the attacking flair over the last 20 years though.   I get the 'defence is the key' mantra, and it's true, but I'd like to see something done which could open up the attacking play a bit more.   After all, isn't that the Raison D'Etre of Rugby League?   Create a spectacle so that people can make money?

Edited October 25, 2024 by Fly-By-TheWire

[Griff]

1 hour ago, Eddie said:

Wow, I’d love it if that poll was run again. For the record mine is darts, and if darts wasn’t included it would be football. 

Darts isn't a sport. 

What kind of football?   Soccer?

[daz39]

1 hour ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

This right here is why I love going down non league football. Fans of both clubs just stand on the touchline together having a laugh and a joke and are there because they love football, no other reason. I have never once seen any hooliganism or trouble between opposing fans at this level of football. The players on the pitch are there because they want to play football, nothing else. Stewards and clubhouse staff and the woman in the ticket booth and every other staff member are all volunteers who are helping out because they love their football team and their local community.

Without wanting to go off topic, a few clubs are starting to see a youth element at their games trying to cause trouble and antagonise opposition supporters, thankfully it is nipped in the bud pretty early on by most clubs, problem there is it is generally free or a couple of quid at most for U16's who presume the chanting and banter they see championed at pro level as 'fun' on twitter etc is acceptable at all levels, it isn't and it won't be.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

2 minutes ago, daz39 said:

Without wanting to go off topic, a few clubs are starting to see a youth element at their games trying to cause trouble and antagonise opposition supporters, thankfully it is nipped in the bud pretty early on by most clubs, problem there is it is generally free or a couple of quid at most for U16's who presume the chanting and banter they see championed at pro level as 'fun' on twitter etc is acceptable at all levels, it isn't and it won't be.

There is a group of youths down my team that stand behind the opposition goal and heckle to keeper but beyond that they have never really caused any trouble. As you say, should they start kicking off more they would be kicked out immediately. There is also a group of around a dozen fans that sing and chant all game and it's all just classic, traditional football songs they sing, never anything nasty and most people just laugh at them! 

[17 stone giant]

5 hours ago, Dunbar said:

Is this forum a lot less busy than it used to be?

It has been ever since those people who voted for rugby union as their second favourite sport were given lifetime bans.

[gingerjon]

17 minutes ago, daz39 said:

Without wanting to go off topic, a few clubs are starting to see a youth element at their games trying to cause trouble and antagonise opposition supporters, thankfully it is nipped in the bud pretty early on by most clubs, problem there is it is generally free or a couple of quid at most for U16's who presume the chanting and banter they see championed at pro level as 'fun' on twitter etc is acceptable at all levels, it isn't and it won't be.

A couple of clubs round here now have an informal policy of not letting in groups of U16s if they are not with an adult. It's informal as the very obvious no-trouble ones still get in.

The biggest issue Hastings have is that it's quite a long way from anywhere else in the division so travelling fans have tended to have long coach journeys to get there. That, combined with Hastings' very decent refreshment offer at the ground, can lead to a few issues. But it's mainly fat middle aged men trying to re-enact Green Street and they either fall over, get laughed at, or both.

[David Shepherd]

Don't like football, bores the pants off me.

Will watch RU internationals if there's nothing else to do, quite enjoy a few pints watching Pontefract RUFC whenever I get a Saturday off.

Got quite into Gaelic recently

Used to love Aussie rules, but it's a shadow of the game it was when Channel 4 first showed it.

American football would be brilliant if it flowed better. Don't think I've ever got through a game without needing 2 haircuts.

[Dunbar]

18 minutes ago, 17 stone giant said:

It has been ever since those people who voted for rugby union as their second favourite sport were given lifetime bans.

So quality over quantity then.... good.