Quote ="Winslade's Offload"It's interesting that you raise the 'flat cap' issue. Personally, I think it is a complete myth, propagated by some RL fans and perhaps believed by many. I have never experienced it when talking to RU fans and I have been living down here for 40 years now. They will certainly defend RU, but like all rugby fans, they enjoy fast flowing rugby with good tries and plenty of physicality. If we could get more people to a couple of matches and ramp up publicity and TV, I think RL would do very well indeed across the whole of the UK.'"
Yes I think RU fans are pretty open minded about RL. The one upmanship comes almost exclusively from RL fans who often want to take every opportunity to put down RU and claim how superior their game is. It's not the best way to sell the sport as it make us look like bitter folk with chips on our shoulders.
When I was at uni (in Leeds) it was the same, there were a lot of posh southern ruggerbugger types and a few of them around my halls, I got a few of them down to watch Leeds as they had good student discounts at the time, or to watch the Tri Nations games in the Skyrack pub, the lads got in to it and they started buying NRL training gear from the Rhinos shop in town to go to training at the uni RU club....that can't help but be good advert for the game as it gets their mates asking questions and talking.
The other day Stuart Lancaster (England RU coach) was on the BBC talking about how he's been to Australia to learn from NRL clubs, he was saying that he wanted to take on board the lines and channels that players in the NRL run because they're ahead of RU with only the All Blacks getting there, he also said he was impressed with the culture at these clubs and how humble they were.
