03-31-2021, 03:40 PM
(03-31-2021, 01:35 PM)wba13 Wrote: Big massive sports fan but very patriotic. Football and Albion has been and always will be my first love, will always watch England and had many a happy day out watching them at Wembley, used to hire a mini bus and our whole Sunday team would have a jolly boys outing as Del put it. in London before the evening match. I was a decent keeper in my youth. But I love cricket , enjoy golf and Rugby Union. Will watch athletics if England have a chance of a medal. Never have and never will like rugby league for me a poor mans union. It’s just me cannot abide with the stupidness of passing the ball though your legs why not needed. Had many happy days at Edgbaston also used to watch Harborne cricket club having being born 100 yds from there club on Harborne Pk Rd.
I'd be the last to get involved in the "union is better than league is better than union" debate-trust me it gets very tedious in this part of the world and each to their own I say-but it's an interesting historical fact that from the split in 1895 to abut 1908 the Northern Union was simply a semi-professional rugby competition played under the same rules as the original Rugby, and those rules included a scrum being formed after every tackle. Unsurprisingly this didn't sit well with tight-fisted Northerners paying for a bit of entertainment on their day off, so the NU simplified the scrum to the play the ball, with the tackled player placing the ball on the ground and the opposite marker having the opportunity to compete for the ball, either by raking it back himself or hacking it upfield. RU followed suit a year later with the rolling away from the ball in the tackle. I'm 55 and can remember the play the ball being competitive and a real feature of the game, but like a lot of RL rule changes in the last 25 years, has been sacrificed for a sanitised, more TV-friendly format.
Here endeth the history lesson....