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Reconciliation Twickenham hosts Rugby League World Cup
LONDON (Reuters) -- Unthinkable a decade ago, rugby league makes its debut at Twickenham on Saturday when the 13-man code's latest version of a World Cup gets underway with England playing holders Australia. Union may have undergone an almighty transformation since turning professional five years ago but the presence of its northern cousin on the hallowed Twickenham turf still represents incredible progress after a century of intransigence. And just to drive home the message that the two sports have shaken hands and made up, Rugby School in the English midlands, where William Webb Ellis famously picked up the ball to invent the game in 1823, hosted a festival of rugby league on Wednesday as a curtain-raiser to the World Cup. Even the venarable Museum of Rugby at Twickenham has dug deep into its dusty lockers and deigned to put on a joint exhibition for its new guests. For the diehards all this progress is nothing less than sacrilegious. It is only six years since Adrian Spencer was forced to withdraw from the annual rugby union match between Cambridge and Oxford at Twickenham because he had played amateur rugby league as a youngster. The affair was just one of scores of cases where even the slightest whiff of association with the professional code was enough to warrant an instant and lifetime blackballing from all things union. Switched codes When Jonathan Davies switched codes to league 13 years ago he became a virtual pariah with the Welsh union and although he said his friends accepted his decision to try to provide for his family vast numbers of Welsh union supporters never forgave him his "treachery". The chasm between the two codes had been in place since 1895 when the "Gentlemen" who ran the game refused to sanction "broken time" compensation payments of the working men of the north who dared to compete and beat their southern opponents. After the breakaway league became ensconced in a narrow strip of northern England and in limited areas of Australia and New Zealand and the two co-existed in comfortable enmity for the next 100 years. When Davies returned to union, welcomed by a desperate nation as a prodigal son after representing Britain and Wales at league, Gareth Davies, then chief executive of Cardiff said it was a small moment of revenge after league clubs had been "raping and pillaging Welsh rugby for a century". But once union faced up to the inevitable and turned professional after the 1995 World Cup, the old animosity -- much of it based on nothing more than snobbery -- was always likely to start to slip. The first cracks began to appear quickly and in 1996 two games were arranged between the English champions of each code. Wigan took first blood by thrashing Bath 82-6 under league rules in Manchester but two weeks later Bath gained revenge with a 44-19 success at union. The results did nothing to settle to age-old argument about which was the better game but the fact that the northeners were even allowed into Twickenham represented enormous progress. Prestigious Soon after, Wigan won union's prestigious Middlesex Sevens at Twickenham and the next few years saw a number of league players move or return to union, some doing better than others. The British Lions' 1997 success in South Africa owed much to the devastating tackling, defensive discipline and aggressive attacking runs of Scott Gibbs, Allan Bateman, Alan Tait and John Bentley as the team's coach Ian McGeechan was happy to acknowledge. Other leading union coaches recognized that there was much to learn from league and began taking on the sport's coaches to bring order to their defensive strategies. Despite the millions of pounds poured into league by Rupert Murdoch's TV companies it is union that has emerged as the sport where money is to be made. Now the fear lies with the league authorities who, having seen their sport lose much of its terrestrial TV exposure, must fight to tempt youngsters into their code and struggle to keep their established stars. The recent switch to union of Jason Robinson, probably the biggest name in British rugby league, and leading coach Ellery Hanley, underlines their problem. Such developments have reignited debate about a potential merger of the two sports, something few officials from either side will ever admit to finding palatable. But if a rugby league World Cup match can be played at Twickenham then both codes will have to accept that absolutely anything can happen.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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