Rugby league’s not skilful? Give this a watch, Eddie

   09/06/2016

The comments from England’s rugby union coach, Eddie Jones, can’t have escaped your attention earlier this week.

If they did, here’s what he said. “Rugby league is not a skilful game, it’s a game where you have to hurt people.”

Now this stirred up a fair old reaction amongst our readers online, as you’d expect. So we decided to put together a small piece for Eddie’s viewing pleasure to give him an insight into how skilful the 13-man game actually is. We’ll save our words, and instead point everyone to the videos below which, in our opinion, seem to suggest that there is a fair bit of skill involved in rugby league after all – wouldn’t you agree?

For example, what about this piece of wizardry from ex-Salford half-back Rangi Chase last year:

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Then there’s just one of the many incredible tries from Castleford’s Denny Solomona:

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And in the NRL, Ben Barba used to make a habit of scoring incredible tries like this:

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And in the international arena there’s no shortage of miracle play – like this (sorry, England fans), wonder New Zealand try in the 2013 World Cup semi-finals:

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And finally, away from passes for one last time, here’s Greg Inglis in full flight from 2014:

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We think that’s skill aplenty, personally. What are your favourite moments of rugby league skill?