Chris Rattue: NRL shows the way for union

Our national game suffers when compared to league's creativity. Photo / Getty Images

Two hours of watching footy on Friday night should have been enough to convince a realist that if rugby isn't dying as a high-profile sport for the modern age, it should be.

No, it wasn't that turgid Air New Zealand affair from New Plymouth where Waikato and Taranaki could manage just one try between them (by a prop) that did the damage.

Instead, it was the magic that came flowing out of Sydney's Olympic Stadium which suggested that, if league can make sure its finances are in order and the NRL salary cap doesn't squash the sport into its level playing field, this is the rugby code with the bright future.

In contrast, rugby union is, I'm afraid, in a hell of a stodgy mess - and with no way out. It is going to suffer in comparison with league, perhaps fatally, over time.

Rugby, in all its drudgery, is ripping the punters off when you compare it to league's combination of open-field skill and ferocity.

The Sydney preliminary NRL final showdown between the Canterbury Bulldogs and Parramatta Eels was a magnificent match. A huge, vibrant crowd provided the backdrop, and to be honest the Bulldogs were only making up the numbers.

Daniel Anderson's Parramatta Eels are trailblazers. In the salary cap world (and judging by recent trends, fortunes change quickly from season to season) it remains to be seen if they can challenge the resilient Melbourne Storm dynasty. Given the way the Eels play the game, let's hope so.

What a night, and what a team. The Eels take risks, throw the ball about, back up as if their life depended on it, keep the ball alive, and trust their skills and instincts.

Only the DNA of the Bulldogs, league's Dogs of War, could keep the scoreline down. Most teams, without such a history of resolve, would have been blasted to smithereens.

From Fuifui Moimoi's magnificent charges, to the skills of Feleti Mateo and the unique Jarryd Hayne, the Eels are a rare, high-octane mix. League is on a high thanks to these wizards, but the Eels are not the only entertainment winners in the NRL.

In contrast, rugby is bogged down, calling on parochialism and patriotism to save it, rather than giving a substantial return for those emotions.

Four million fans. Yeah right. The union boys may be able to test the codes of advertising standards when making that claim, but only for the World Cup tournament.

Rugby, the game we have loved for so long, has ground to a horrible halt, mired by scrum resets, breakdown confusion, kicking festivals, officious referees, endless penalties, errors, an inability to properly police or institute an offside line and a cross-hemisphere political rivalry that stymies potential remedies.

A veteran photographer told me after the recent Auckland-North Harbour match that there was so much forceback kicking involved, he had trouble finding anything to photograph.

Much of the kicking you see in rugby isn't part of any clever plot - the kicks are desperate acts by players who probably wish they could run with the ball but know it's too risky and can't think of anything else to do. Thus, we are in the era where attacks are based on hopeful and often hopeless chip kicks and hoofs to the corners.

Not that this matters to those of us with open minds and a love of open footy because we've got the NRL to watch, complete with its over-the-top commentators and incidents galore for them to talk - or yell - about.

League is made for television, with a high-velocity and an action zone which fits perfectly into the TV screen.

Yes, the really big rugby union games will still draw decent audiences, because the enormity of the occasion will make the boring mess seem worthwhile.

It is in the week-to-week business though that union is going to crash, because the modern sports audience - saturated in sport - is long past wanting or needing too much significance. It wants personalities, drama, controversy and most importantly - action.

I timed a few incidents in Saturday's Ranfurly Shield clash between Canterbury and Northland and at times it took up to two minutes between the referee's whistle and the ball returning to play. The official watch is stopped, so some of this time is not lost, but these stoppages ruin the flow and buzz of the game. Payoffs for these waits are few and far between.

Long stoppages are virtually non-existent in league and penalty counts low. The longest breaks are for goal kicks, and even they are rare.

A massive advantage for league is its structure which enables officials to get defenders back behind an easily defined offside line. In contrast, union's free-flow allows defenders to swamp attackers, and referees seem unable to keep players on-side.

The Warriors may be down at the moment, but they can breathe easy, knowing they are part of the code that is delivering to its fans.

Put it this way. Name the rugby side which is delivering for the spirit of the game, the team which is taking union forward, the one which is setting the entertainment standards, the one which might bring comparisons with famous teams of old. You can't.

Name the rugby side that is saying "we'll show you what this game is all about." Name the rugby side (or even player) of today who you might still be talking about in 20 years' time for any other reason than victories. Pick the last time you saw a rugby player charging around in open field, like Michael Jones or John Kirwan or Christian Cullen, like league superstars Jarryd Hayne or Billy Slater, like the way we dreamed about in the playgrounds of our childhood.

There is a good argument that you shouldn't compare sports, that it should be a case of each to their own. But even here, you can say that league is achieving its aims in terms of the spectacle, while union is not meeting whatever standards it has set for itself.

The NRL rule makers could point to Moimoi's brilliant charges, Feleti Matua's ball playing, Hayne's dancing feet or the Eels' passing interchanges and say this is what we hoped our game would be about.

Yes, union is supposed to be different. But it is also supposed to involve some razzle-dazzle, and it ain't. When can you last recall seeing a fantastic ball-handling move in rugby union involving more than a couple of passes and players?

If rugby has a vision for what its game is supposed to look like, it would have one heck of a battle finding a poster team to prove it's working.

Rugby's top sides and coaches aren't flourishing via the rules. They are barely coping with them. With another season of entertainment hope laid to waste, the All Black coaches continue to blather on about growing things for the future. What is this? Market gardening?

Contrast that with league, which is delivering in spades.

It's not just the Eels - there are Benji Marshall's Wests Tigers, the little men at teams like Souths and North Queensland, Johnathan Thurston, the Manly team of 2008, and many more who have or are exciting the fans rather than sending them to sleep. Silly, departed Bulldog Sonny Bill Williams was bigger than anything in rugby union, where his magic has just about sunk without trace.

Even the AFL, a game whose subtleties go right over my head, is starting to look quite interesting. A highlights package of Aussie Rules goals, played on television last week, gave me more of a buzz than an entire season of rugby.

It's hard to understand where rugby thinks it is at. A TV commentator from New Plymouth tried to infer that the contest between Waikato and Taranaki was a stirring, muscular provincial clash.

It wasn't. It was a painful bore with an atmosphere to match, like the majority of rugby.

Maybe TV's spin doctors are medicating our commentators. I smell a rat in that department.

But the patients, the spectators, will only linger in the waiting room for so long.