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‘The gap’s getting bigger’: The changing face of English rugby
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Six Nations titles, low-scoring games and former rugby league players: three things that have seemingly vanished from men’s rugby union in England.
England’s Six Nations struggles and the Gallagher PREM’s increasingly basketball-like scorelines have been well documented, but the disappearance of rugby league converts has happened far more quietly.
In the 2000s, four former league players represented England in rugby union, with Jason Robinson the poster boy. Seven followed in the 2010s. So far this decade, there have been none.
Sam Burgess’ acrimonious return to rugby league after the 2015 World Cup may not have helped the relationship between the two codes in England, but there is a bigger factor at play.
A move to the NRL was once reserved for the standout superstars of the English game. Players like Adrian Morley, Gareth Ellis, James Graham, Burgess and Sam Tomkins had to truly dominate the English game before making the move to Australia. The net has been thrown far wider over the past decade, however, with the English diaspora in Australia expanding. Warrington Wolves’ captain George Williams will embark on his second stint in the NRL, for example, following Saturday’s Super League Grand Final against Wakefield Trinity.
What’s more, the NRL has adopted a policy of recruiting young stars very early. Sunday’s NRL Grand Final will feature Dom Young on the wing for Newcastle Knights, who has been in the NRL since moving from Huddersfield Giants as a 19-year-old.
The NRL now offers the financial boost and potential stardom that a move to rugby union once offered. For former dual code England international Chris Ashton, who made the move to rugby union from Wigan Warriors at the age of 20, it’s a simple equation.
Alongside Robinson, another former Wigan star, Ashton has been one of the biggest cross-code success stories this century in England, earning 44 caps for his country, scoring a record 101 tries in the Gallagher PREM and setting the single-season Top 14 record with 24.
But switching codes remains a risk, one that neither league players nor union clubs in England appear particularly inclined to take any more, Ashton said to RugbyPass recently.
“The NRL now is a big factor,” the TNT Sports pundit said. “Before, it wasn’t. If you’re a young kid in Super League, you can go to the NRL and get a minimum contract of 150. So if you’re earning half that in Super League and you’re a decent 18-, 19-year-old, you’re going to go and do a guaranteed minimum wage in the NRL rather than taking a chance at rugby union. So that’s changed. It wasn’t there before; now it is in place.
“The time it takes, the commitment it takes for a rugby union club to get a rugby league guy up to speed. It’s slightly different for some of the Fijian or Tongan players. They’ve generally played a bit of union when they’re a kid, but a lot of Super League players, none of them have played union. They haven’t been near it. It’s an insult in Wigan if you play rugby union! So I think that there are two really big factors. It’s a big risk.
“And it’s hard to get these kids out of the towns. Everyone wants to play for Wigan, for example. The kids are desperate to play for Wigan. It’s been tried many times where they get some of the best kids and say, ‘Do you want to come and play at, say, Northampton?’ They’d say, ‘I want to play for Wigan, why would I do that?’ So it’s hard to get them to move across.”
That trend currently appears to be largely confined to England. Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii has led the charge of league players moving to union in Australia in time for the 2027 World Cup. He was followed by the Western Force’s Zac Lomax, with Sydney Roosters duo Angus Crichton and Mark Nawaqanitawase following after the NRL Grand Final.
Maybe a home World Cup would see things change in England again, but Ashton is less convinced. If anything, he believes the gap is growing wider between the two codes in England, and after years of union pilfering some of league’s star names, that is only fair enough.
Prospective converts would also see that four of the last five league players to represent England in union eventually returned to the 13-man code. Even Ben Te’o, who enjoyed a successful six years in rugby union, winning a Six Nations title with England and representing the British & Irish Lions in 2017, returned to league in the end.
“I think the gap’s getting bigger,” Ashton continued. “It’s getting wider apart. I think there are a lot of rugby league kids that rugby union could tap into, but they’d get offended by that. And so they should be, because we’re stealing their kids.”
One way to make the relationship more sustainable could be for traffic between the codes to run both ways. Nawaqanitawase is returning to union having switched codes alongside Carter Gordon following the 2023 World Cup. Similarly, Sonny Bill Williams enjoyed two stints in either code. Currently, Ardie Savea seems perpetually linked with an NRL move. England’s Ben Earl has expressed a pipe dream to play in the NRL. Several players in England have made such a move towards the end of their careers – Christian Wade being the most notable, who briefly represented Wigan before returning to union.
But such a move carries just as much risk, Ashton believes, which will continue to dissuade players.
“It’s just a risk. If we take Owen Farrell, for example, I have no doubt he would have loved to play for Wigan. When’s the right time to do that in your career?
“You’re not going to do it at your peak in union because it’s an unnecessary risk to leave and go and try a different sport that you might not be successful at when you’re already being successful in one. Then you do it when you’re older and people might say, ‘Well, he’s past it, so why is he coming?’ So every way, you’re not going to win.
“I don’t want to say I did it right or wrong, but I was 20 years old. If it had gone wrong, and it very nearly did go wrong, I was young enough to go back and get going again.”
One area where ties do not appear to be severed, albeit in a one-way direction, is coaching. Rugby union coaching teams in England seem to be populated by former league players. Ireland and Lions boss Andy Farrell and the white whale for the England men’s team, Shaun Edwards, are the great success stories, but they are two of many former league players in the English game.
We’re in a new era in the relationship between the two codes. For years, rugby union in England benefited from some of rugby league’s best talent crossing over, while relatively little moved in the opposite direction. That dynamic has shifted. With the NRL now offering young English players a clear pathway, strong financial rewards and a huge profile, union can no longer assume league’s leading players will see switching codes as the obvious next step. The talent pool is still there, but increasingly it is rugby league itself that is giving those players every reason to stay.
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