A clip from a Premiership Rugby rugby union match has gone viral with rugby league fans ridiculing the passage of play.
The passage of play lasting just over one minute came from Sunday’s (7th January) game between Bath and Gloucester, the match eventually seeing home side Bath run out as victors and move up to third in England’s elite rugby union competition.
A major criticism of rugby union, particularly from rugby league fans, would be that it can often become a game of ‘kick tennis’ with either team’s full-backs and wingers bombing the ball down field to one another.
There perhaps has never quite been such an obvious example of ‘kick tennis’ than the footage shared from the game at the weekend in which Bath kick from a scrum in their own half, leading to a series of twelve consecutive kicks.
After over a minute of the team’s backs playing kick and catch between them a kick is charged down and play resumes midfield, but for the entire sequence the entire middle forty metres of the field is eliminated with players standing still and waiting for the passage of play to end.
The footage was initially shared on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, by rugby union journalist Charlie Morgan who clearly wasn’t a fan of the playstyle either, asking: “please can we close this loophole?”
Since then the clip has gone somewhat viral having been viewed almost 250,000 times from Morgan’s account, and then a further 1.5 million times from the account Tight Five Rugby who labelled it simply as a “stupid passage of play”.
The footage has now moved into the rugby league circles of social media, whilst also being criticised by leading union figures including England international Joe Marler who described the passage of play as “bo**ocks”.
One league fan posted: “How on earth is this more popular than rugby league is beyond me.”
Another added: “Even both sets of players got fed up with the constant kicking.”
Among some fans though it led to outrage about how rugby league has been allowed to fail as a product, considering the far larger entertainment factor it brings to the table.
One fan stated: “Still amazes me that 130 years later, Rugby League governance still hasn’t grasped investing the sport effectively long-term in areas & people of influence beyond the north to create culture, and to ensure RL is well positioned to make intros to the world socially & commercially.”
You can watch the clip here in all it’s glory.
What a stupid passage of play. #BATvGLOpic.twitter.com/s2sAkrnnhO
— Tight Five Rugby (@TightFive_Rugby) January 7, 2024
