It’s been 100 years since rugby league defected from union to pursue the professional life, and ever since, a century of tribal bigotry has cast an iron curtain between the two codes. Class wars and pot-shots at each other’s economic and social backgrounds have driven out moderates, tightening the blinkers on die hard fans. A hybrid code would be nothing less than a pig's breakfast then.

Well, not according to Alex Evans, former assistant coach to the Wallabies, and Wayne Bennett, incumbent Broncos coach, who've both put their professional jealousies aside to table a merged game between the two codes. The crux of the idea is to combine it a juniors’ level, and teach primary school children the generic skills critical to both games.

“Both games are about running, passing, catching, tackling and continuity,” Mr. Evans said to The Australian. “Even in those areas where they're different, they're not that far apart. League has the play-the-ball, rugby has the ruck.”

The hybrid code would also give league and union an enormous opportunity to sport a united front, at a grass roots level, to counter the enormous development resources of the Australian Football League. David Gallop, head of the National Rugby League, and Eddie Jones, former Wallabies coach, were among the first to immediately bin the proposal, but the Evans-Bennett hybrid game has won over some key players in the rugby community.

Peter Lewis, chairman of Queensland Rugby Union, heeded the proposal, saying to The Australian, “I’ve always said the smartest thing rugby could do is merge with rugby league.” “League is big in Australia but it’s going nowhere in the rest of the world, whereas the biggest advantage rugby has is that it’s an international game.”

Australian Rugby Union chief executive, John O’Neill, has bigger concerns. Mr. O'Neill said to The Daily Telegraph, “I think we know there is a gorilla in the room called AFL and we know football is the big mover and shaker.”

“In this battle for hearts and minds, there is risk one of us [league or union] may slip off the list.”

Mr. O'Neill is bang on the dollar. AFL and football are beginning to dip their chubby fingers into rugby's cold pies, exploring Mr. O'Neill's heartland, Queensland and Western Sydney. For the two rugby codes which, as some experts are saying, are ailing considerably, the future looks abysmal. David Gallop, National Rugby League chief executive, is all too aware of the thin ice his NRL is on.

“The message is coming through, in no uncertain terms, that some Sydney clubs will die if they don’t change,” said Mr. Gallop at a meeting of NRL club chief executives in May.

The Penrith Panthers and the St George Illawarra Dragons are in prime position to be cut. The Panthers are now getting less than 10 000 spectators through the gates, while the Dragons are snatching at 12 500 at best. Cronulla and Kogarah stadiums are a sore site for club administrators, most of them vacant and a former shadow of the spectacular Super League in the 80s and 90s.

Problem is, it will get even worse under the rule of the Iemma state government. Iemma has cast a pall over league in NSW, dismembering one of NRL’s most reliable avenues of income, the pokies, with his 33% hike on pokies machine tax.

A torrid season for the NRL has been topped off by indoor smoking bans, which colluding with the tax hike, has fashioned a $65 million gap in the treasury of NSW clubs.

One silver lining to come out of NRL’s 2008 nightmare season was the unexpected success of the under-20s Toyota National Youth Competition, which outscored union’s Super 14s on the "plug in drug".

In the meanwhile, rugby union’s domestic woes start with Mr. O’Neill’s failed attempts to kick-start a domestic union competition in 2007. Advertised, albeit very scantily, as the Mazda Australian Rugby Championship, it lost $4.7 million dollars in its inaugural year, and was swept aside into the dustbin of history. Union administrators were lining up to jump ship from a competition that was getting below an average of 3000 people past the gates. Mr. O’Neill is all too aware of his dire situation.

“Our position has been eroding and, I don't want to be overly dramatic, but unless we find some transforming initiatives, that erosion will continue until it reaches an irreversible decline,” he told ABC News.

Union’s headlining act, the Super 14s, has limped on into its 13th season, weighed down by collapsing scrums and frequent stoppages, an inevitable outcome of a hefty rulebook that is the ultimate vanguard to a stop-start game. Mr. O’Neill has admitted to its increasingly lacklustre nature, “the matches are not providing the entertainment that fans demand.”

TV audiences have slid down 20% with live telecasts from Cape Town or Pretoria being aired in the middle of the Australian and New Zealand night, and losing Mr. O’Neill 2/3rd of his target audience. Player defection into competitions promising bigger pay cheques in Europe still remains an unresolved issue, while financially, the ARU is expected to post a $7-8 million loss this year. Not one Australian state had a healthy financial return from the game. Perth’s union delegates in the Super 14s, the Western Force, have a sponsor gone bust, owing millions.

Mr. O’Neill has even said that the ARU would have gone into liquidation were it not for the $43 million earned from hosting the 2003 World Cup. “Thank God we had those reserves,” Mr. O'Neill said to ABC News. “And those reserves are rapidly eroding. It's imperative the ARU doesn't go broke, because if it does, the game goes broke.”

The ARU is doing its best to resist liquidation, trying to boost the Super 14s’ numbers with the Experimental Law Variations. Bulls winger Bryan Habana told reporters at the Laureus World Sports Awards in St. Petersburg, that it gives it “a lot more of a rugby league feel.” Union critics, such as former Welsh Rugby Union chief executive, David Moffett, see this as desperation from the ARU. “John is desperate to try and get some sort of interest for rugby. He believes he can do that by making rugby less authentic than it should be and changing the laws of the game,” Mr. Moffett said to the BBC.

News Ltd’s five-year $NZ644 million dollar contract with SANZAR, the Super 14s’ ruling body, expires in 2010. That will be crunch time for “the game played in heaven.”

Football in Australia has an exceedingly brighter future. The A-League has leapt in bounds since its inception into the Australian domestic sport’s market in 2005. Average crowds for the eight teams are now bordering on 15 000, a threefold increase since its inaugural year. Membership drives are hitting record highs as international stars are being lured into the baby competition. Dwight Yorke and Juninho. John Aloisi and Craig Moore.

The Socceroos are catching up with the Wallabies and are fingertips away from being the strongest national sport’s brand. In 2006, the Socceroos drew 3.4 million viewers to the World Cup Qualifier against Uruguay. That was only 700 000 shy of the 4 million who tuned in to watch Australia play England in the 2003 Rugby World Cup.

In an even more impressive display of growth, Ben Buckley, chief executive of the Football Federation of Australia said to The Sydney Morning Herald, “We’ve got scope for an additional four teams in season five. I would be disappointed if we didn't have at least 10 by then. Twelve is more challenging, but I don’t rule it out.”

Plans are under way to induct Gold Coast United and Townsville Northern Thunder into the premiership by the 2009/2010 season. The richest man in Queensland, mining magnate, Clive Palmer, is heading the Gold Coast consortium, with an estimated personal wealth of $1.5 billion dollars, according to BRW. “We thought it would be a good thing for the community. There are 10,000 soccer players between Byron Bay and the Coast,” Mr. Palmer told The Courier Mail.

Proposals for a national under-14s team and a B-League means that football is winding up as a big player in the domestic sports scene in Australia, and with the Federal Government committing $6 million for the FIFA 2018 World Cup, Australian football has never seen a better and brighter future.

The A-League is booming but the most chilling figures are reserved for the fourth most popular domestic competition in the world, the Australian Football League. 1 in 19 Australians are members of an AFL club. Games score an average of 38 000 bums on seats which dwarf the 18 000 league and the 15 000 football gets.

TV rights and advertising deals give the code a monstrous financial war chest. Channel Nine is putting in a one billion dollar bid for the TV rights come 2009, which is 10 times more than what league is currently getting for its TV rights. There seems to be no stopping the rolling stone. AFL commissioner, Andrew Demetriou, even wants to plant two more teams across the Murray River.

“I would hate to think we’ll be looking back in 20 or 30 years saying, ‘Gosh we missed out on that great opportunity in south-east Queensland and western Sydney,’” Mr. Demetriou has said on ABC News.

Plans are under construction for a Gold Coast team to be introduced into the league come 2011. $28 million dollars has been used to develop another team from NSW so that 2012 will see the league jump from 17 to 18 teams. Football and AFL are making impressive strides into rugby territory, but a united front from rugby union and league may be enough to slow down the market imperialism from Mr. Demetrious and Mr. Buckley.

Rugby league may be blowing out 100 candles this year, but the road ahead is not looking too good for either league or union.

Photo courtesy of: pallotron

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