By Rabble Rouser
January 30 2003

Floozies, Boozers, Fezboys and Loozers! So Sale scored more points than Saints (41 to 39) in the clash of the codes. Big, fat hairy deal! But the Sharks weren't the winner on the night. Read on and find out who was and why. Though the Sharks came out on top in the scoring stakes, the winner was most definitely the game of rugby league.

Why? Well, consider that since the two codes ran their World Cup tournaments in 1995, union has been on the up, league on the skids.

Since professionalism in rugby union, crowds, sponsorship, television revenue and the game's profile have improved beyond measure. In the same short time, rugby league has gone in the opposite direction.

In my opnion the whole cross-code farce was a poorly-disguised attempt at attention-seeking from the 13-a-side lot. It worked, after a fashion, but nobody could take it seriously apart from Saints, their fans and those that think league is superior to a game that shares very little with it other than one word in a name, the shape of the ball and the dimensions of the pitch.

No rugby union fan I know goes to rugby league web sites to tell the fans of that game that rugby union is better than theirs, has better athletes participating at the professional level, or that crowds are (now) better in the Zurich Premiership and for international games.

And nobody, but nobody, would say that a club match played half a century ago attacted 50,000 and deem it to be relevant.

Yet we have been bombarded with this rhetorical nonsense from planet league for many years now. Frankly, I don't give a monkey's, nor should anyone else with at least half a brain.

Sale were in a lose-lose situation. Win the game and they (and by association, rugby union as a whole) is deemed boring because they'd use the rolling maul as a tactic. Lose the game and the "my game's better than yours" from the M62 corridor would gloat until the cows come home.

Add to that the insults of the PA announcer at Knowsley Road, the whingeing of Saints coach Ian Millward about the full-time hooter going early and the fact that nobody in the media thought the exercise at all relevant, a re-match would be utterly pointless for anyone bar those league folks with chips on their shoulders. It'll just be a grudge thing for the self-righteous, hard done-by leaguers.


The Sharks, unbeknown to them, became the latest cannon fodder in the broadside fired by the leaguers. I hope that they have now seen sense and will not consider any re-match at Heywood Road or anywhwere else.

Let them wallow in their self-pity and ignore the jibes. Rugby union is going places. League, by the way it has to cry "look at me!" all the time, seems to be gonig nowhwere and has to resort to this sort of gimmickry to get the media coverage it craves.

I LOVE rugby league, I really do. I watch it regularly and played it for several years, but the age-old arguments from supporters old and new are still being put forward and it has become very tiresome. And I am at a loss as to why Sale agreed to dance to the RFL tune the way they did.

Please, please, don't do it again, you Sharkies!