Well they used to say that Union was an Amateur game played by Professionals and League was a Professional game played by Amateurs.

I think Leage sucks these last few decades. It lacks certainty. Is insecure against AFL. Is nothing more than a Tackling game that has nearly more kicking in it than AFL - in fact, most points are scored via a facet of kicking. Rules? What rules? They keep changing more than the bloody fashions of the jerseys. The code is ruled by TV not crowds.
It has forgotten the importance of the Test arena in an effort of jealousy with AFL and aims for the Grand Final level as 'important'.
League has become a gutless and frivolous game that doesn't like the fact that more people attend the Clubs for a good night out rather than the games themselves.
When the Panthers won their 'fairytale' GF - it was because the Leagues CLub 'Panthers' said "You work for us - we don't work for you." and they were right.

Union is far more exciting a game but it is also far more predictable in its traditionalism. Its obvious that the next face of Union here would be to dispense with SA and NZ and just do a national 'Provincial' of all of Australia soon. Pity NRL (National Redneck League) doesn't realise the 'International' arena being left unattended by Union these days. To me League was all about the Kangaroos ...not the Broncos or Storm in this years GF (so obvious!).

Get rid of the video refs and umpires DURING the game. Use em to mark the Ref standards: that is - the more decisions they get right, the more money they make. The more mistakes - the more $ deductions. Chances are that Refs/umpires will improve immensly.

...but hey, 'Sport' is un-orthodox in Australia and South America ...unlike Africa and the Occidental region of the Southern Hemisphere
...but thats another topic

I love Union these days after growing up playing league. The problem i see in league is the de-skilling of the game. The scrum, play the ball, tap all gone. I spew every time i see a tackled player get up and take two steps forward before playing the ball, this is a penalty just like putting the ball on the ground and tapping it with your foot to start play. speed should not come by loosening rules.

I played both games and although I loved playing union it has always been a crap game to watch. mostly even at the highest level

The problem with league isn't that it needs a re vamp but that it has already had too many of them.

The Lost scrums ? WHY

They now use 2 referees - this seems to produce twice the number of refereeing errors.

85% of the times the ball hits the ground its a knock on irrespective of which way it really went but 15% of the time its OK - for no reason different from most of the others.

Sometimes the ball floats 8 or 10 mtrs fwd and thats OK but other times it is deflected from 40 degrees back to 30 deg back and deemed to have been propelled fwd - of course unless its a tap on in which case the rules on direction seem to be suspended, almost all tap ons actually do go fwd but almost none are ruled to have gone fwd.

Attacking players are now allowed to be in the defensive line interfering and it seems to be the responsibility of the defence to not get in their way.

Sometimes players can be dragged 20 mtrs into touch and it is OK but on others moving them 6 inches will draw a penalty.

Teams which get off the tackled player quick are penalised when they don't but teams who always stay on the tackled player are allowed more latitude.

Some teams seem to get the benifit of the doubt when there is none and some don't get the benifit of the doubt even when thet almost certainly scored.

Agree that the coverage has turned into a personality competition and a sales pitch for gambling. OH the forward pass rule is poo to. Now you can through a flat pass, this was a scrum now it is normal. what next we start gridiron passes to make it quicker. The game is a sad excuse.