The Welsh Codebreakers

I've just watched The Rugby Codebreakers, a documentary shown on BBC Wales last night about the Welsh rugby union players who were forced, as the saying had it, to "go North" and become professional rugby league players in Lancashire and Yorkshire when the union game was, at least officially, still strictly amateur.

Stories about the social ostracism imposed on those who converted from union to league are legion, as are those about the subterfuge scouts and directors of the Northern clubs were compelled to resort to when heading into Welsh rugby union territory to obtain the signatures of star players from the working-class mining villages of the South Wales Valleys and dockland districts of Cardiff - a history outlined again last night, with much of the archive footage coming from the 1969 documentary The Game That Got Away - but I hadn't quite realised the extent of the racism amongst the Welsh union's selectors which meant that up until the mid-1980's the chance of a black Welsh rugby union player being picked for the national side was effectively nil, all but forcing them, as some of their black South African counterparts also did, to accept the generous financial inducements being offered them by the top rugby league clubs in the North.

Wigan's legendary Welsh wing Billy Boston

Treizification comes to town

Fans of both rugby codes will be heading to Manchester tomorrow as England play their last match in rugby union's World Cup, a dead rubber against Uruguay at the City of Manchester Stadium, and Leeds meet Wigan in the rugby league Grand Final at Old Trafford.

Since rugby union lifted its ban on professionals twenty years ago, quite a few players and coaches have left league for union, although many of them have not found it an easy switch, Sam Burgess being the latest convert from league to union to struggle in the rival code. Some of the England rugby union team's youngsters played rugby league at amateur or junior level, including Owen Farrell and George Ford, both sons of former league players who now coach in union. Rugby union has also adopted some tactics and rules from league, a process French rugby league historian Robert Fassolette has dubbed "treizification".

When rugby union became openly professional in 1995, many had concerns that the fifteen-a-side game would poach league's top talent in much the same way that union players used to be lured North by league club scouts. While that has happened to some extent, thankfully it hasn't been on anything like the scale that some feared and, as now looks likely with Burgess, several ultimately returned to the thirteen-man code.

1845 and all that

I picked up a slim book the other day that includes the original 1845 and 1871 rules of rugby.

A nineteenth century fan of rugby football would recognise most of the play in the modern games of rugby league and rugby union. As the introduction points out, rule 18 from 1871, "any player holding or running with the ball being tackled and the ball being fairly held he must at once cry down and there put it down" is very close to the play-the-ball rule in rugby league.

The football game played at Rugby School in the 1840's is the forerunner not just of rugby league and rugby union but American football too. A modern NFL fan would have no problem understanding rule 43: "A player who has made and claimed a fair catch shall thereupon either take a drop kick or a punt or place the ball for a place kick."

The two nations of rugby

Since the 1895 split in English rugby football,  rugby league has been the Northern, working-class and professional counterpart to the Southern, middle-class and until 1995 officially amateur (in reality, semi-professional) rugby union. This weekend's World Cup matches in rugby union and Super League Grand Final in rugby league highlighted the differences between the two codes.

One of the reasons I prefer rugby league to rugby union is something that fans of the 15-a-side code claim as a strength, namely that, unlike the 13-a-side game, it can be played by people of all sizes. That might have been OK when rugby union was still officially amateur and more of a game for players than spectators but I for one wouldn't pay to watch fat guys lumbering into each and lying on the ball compared to the athleticism and speed of rugby league.

Those qualities were on full view at Old Trafford on Saturday night in the rugby league Grand Final as Leeds beat St Helens with Robbie Burrow, probably the smallest guy on the pitch, scoring a try and setting up another with two dazzling runs.  Even in slow motion the rugby league players look faster than their union counterparts. No wonder the French nicknamed league "lightning rugby" after Salford played a promotional tour there in the 1930's.

It's not just on the field that rugby league stands out, its professional image standing in sharp contrast to the dwarf throwing, ball tampering and ferry diving antics of the England rugby union team whose World Cup, not surprisingly given the players' class background, increasingly began to resemble an inadequately disciplined public school trip.

It is not just in former mining areas and ports in Northern England or the east coast of Australia that working-class people play football with an oval ball.  There is at least one place where rugby union is  truly a mass sport: Wales.  As they're still in the World Cup, that's who I'll be rooting for.