Originally Posted by
Dux
I've never given any credence whatsoever to the idea of a RL/RU merger.
I can see why it comes up, because there seems to be a logic to it: the two games compete with one another for both a fan base and a player base, and generally split resources that if pooled together would be able to achieve far more than either code can in its own right. So on the supply side of the economic equation it makes sense.
The problem is the demand side of the equation. Who wants a merged game? Nobody. Not RU fans, not RL fans. Even if it was a merger in name only, and really just RU swallowing up RL's clubs, they wouldn't be getting those clubs as they exist now: what would St Helens's fan base be if it suddenly became a RU club? About 1-2000? One can only speculate, but I can't imagine many sticking with the club. It would become a financial basket case overnight.
If this utopian (dystopian for me) vision of a unified rugby ever came about, you would end up with an even more fragmented landscape than we have now, because you'd very quickly end up with three codes of rugby: RL and RU rebuilt from the grass roots by fans of those sports, and a hybrid code that nobody is interested in.