Why many rugby league fans will be supporting Australia against England in rugby union's World Cup
When England play Australia tomorrow, there will be a small but highly motivated minority of Englishmen who will be thinking the unthinkable by hoping for an Australian victory.
Strange to relate, there were those who wanted Fiji to win – and even Wales.
In fact, whoever England play there will be some of us who will prefer an away win. Even more fundamentally, the real hard-liners among us don’t accept that there is such a thing as the Rugby World Cup, any more than there is just one code of rugby.
It’s not just inverted snobbery nor Northern chippiness that are responsible, although both of them have their place in the mix; there are important principles involved.
For starters, there is no such game as rugby. There is rugby union, almost certainly not invented at Rugby School by William Webb Ellis, but codified there and at other public schools.
Then there is rugby league, established in 1895 by leading Northern clubs sick of the hypocrisy over what they could pay their working-class players. English rugby split not just along geographic, but along class lines.
It sounds like a clash of ideas and interests straight out of ancient history, but it still resonates today.
Rugby union has never truly reconciled itself to the existence of another code of rugby and has done everything in its power to put obstacles in its way.
One of union’s propaganda triumphs has been to treat the name rugby as though it belongs exclusively to the 15-a-side game. More fools the international rugby league authorities for letting them get away with it.
Every four years, around this time, people who have only a vague idea of what I do, will say things like: "I bet you’re looking forward to the World Cup."
I have to tell them, as gently as possible, that my next World Cup is in Australia in 2017. All I am doing with this one being played here is avoiding it.
In fact, one of my most satisfying journalistic experiences was getting paid for writing a regular diary column for a newspaper about the lengths I had to go to in order to avoid union’s 2007 World Cup.
I’m aware that all this will seem unduly fanatical to many people, but we have a shared history that it is impossible – and dishonest – to ignore.
Most infamously, there is the behaviour of the French RU during the Second World War. When France was occupied and run by the puppet Vichy regime, the union authorities and the Nazis collaborated in stamping out league.
But surely that is all in the past? The truth is that it is when rugby union wants it to be, when it suits them.
Every step forward that rugby league has taken - be it by getting into the universities or the Armed Forces to name two major growth areas - has had to be fought for, inch by inch, against union opposition.
As the World Cup plays on, it is worth remembering that their Dirty Tricks Department is a world-wide operation.
Ask Sol Mokdad, the president of the UAE rugby league, thrown in jail at the local RU’s behest earlier this year for daring to make an alternative form of rugby available.
The game in Morocco and Italy has also suffered from recent union intransigence. Cheer for that lot? I don’t think so.
There are other reasons for not getting behind England in quite the united way that some expect of us.
There is a political dimension; if the Church of England is the Tory Party at Prayer, then Twickenham is surely the Tory Party at Play.
If there is any republican dissident among the players, maintaining a dignified, Jeremy Corbyn-style silence whilst others in the line bark ‘God Save the Queen’ like demented corgis, then the cameras never seem to find him.
Of course, I stand to be accused of sour grapes, of just having a downer on union because they have started to skim off some of our best players.
Well, we are in competition for many of the potential players of the two codes, so it is natural to wish that Sam Burgess, for example, was still involved in the game he was born to play.
That is one thing that has drawn in a few leaguies who would otherwise be giving it a wide berth – the sight of such a magnificent rugby league player looking bored and under-utilised in an England shirt.
I almost fancied a sneaky peep at that myself, but after trying to watch him against Wales for 40 minutes, I think I can wait until he is wearing an England RL shirt again, or even the green and red of South Sydney.
Now that, to the dissident faction where this ‘Rugby’ World Cup is concerned, would really be something worth cheering.
by Dave Hadfield has written about rugby league for over 40 years and is the author of seven books on the game
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