His fellow conspirators are not exactly stuck for answers: sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education, public order, wine and peace feature prominently among their responses. “Alright,” says an exasperated Reg. “But apart from that…”
There has been many a moment over the last couple of decades when Rugby Union followers have asked a similar question of Rugby League, without identifying anything like the same number of benefits. Crooked scrum feeds, chest-high tackling, identikit forwards, Sam Burgess? If these were plusses, the minuses must have been truly diabolical.
Defensive organisation is perhaps the one area where there is something close to consensus agreement over the 13-man game’s positive impact on the rival code. It has become the devil’s own job to break the line and score from distance – especially at the last knockings, as Ireland found against the French a week ago.
Shaun Edwards, a 24-carat Rugby League great as a player and similarly precious as a specialist Union coach, was the inspiration behind Les Bleus’ successful manning of the barricades in Dublin. He is not the first 13-a-sider from the north of England to earn his daily baguette across the water – Dave Ellis was doing it more than 20 years ago – but if France should win a first world title on home soil in 2023, he will certainly be the most venerated.
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