The greatest impact was at the technical level, with a flow of league coaching staff to union

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A few weeks after the seismic shock of the Super League fifa 15 coins proposals, the sporting world seemed to tilt even further over on its axis when rugby union’s International Board announced the abandonment of 109 years of amateurism and its embrace of professionalism. Unlike in league, union’s dumping of what had been seen as its most prized attribute caused no protests or demonstrations, despite the fact that the adoption of professionalism was a far more radical step than the Super League proposals had been to league. In the north it gave rise to the fear that union’s greater monetary and institutional power would lead to league’s best players being bought up. Even worse, union’s professionalism was largely being financed by Murdoch’s News Corporation, especially in the southern hemisphere, leading to rumours of a master plan to merge the two sports in the interests of his global television network.

Neither nightmare came to pass. A mere handful of league players switched to union. For a number of those who took the opportunity to play union, the game was neither as easy as they had expected nor as satisfying to play, highlighting that the two codes were indeed two different sports. Some even felt uncomfortable in the different social setting of rugby union. The greatest impact was at the technical level, with a flow of league coaching staff to union. Of the eight teams in the quarter-finals of the 2003 Rugby Union World Cup, only New Zealand did not have a former rugby league coach as part of their coaching team.

Nor did Murdoch’s media network make any move to merge the sports or develop a third, hybrid, game. A quick glance at viewing demographics for the two sports would be enough to show that they catered for two quite different mar- kets. Much of the merger talk was killed off in 1996 by the Murdoch-financed ‘Cross-Code Challenge’ between Wigan and Bath. To no-one’s surprise, Wigan trounced Bath 82–6 under league rules, despite taking it easy at the request of their opponents, and then lost 44–19 under union rules. More telling perhaps was Wigan’s easy victory in that year’s Middlesex rugby union sevens tournament, which highlighted that in skills common to both sports league had the definite edge. But in truth these matches merely demonstrated once again that the only thing league and union had in common was the type of ball and the shape of the goalposts.