Six Nations titles, low-scoring games and former rugby league players: three things that have seemingly disappeared from men’s rugby union in England.
of England Six Nations the struggles and increasingly the basketball results of Gallagher PREM are well documented, but the demise of the rugby league converts happened much more quietly.
During the 2000s, four former major leaguers represented England in Rugby June, with poster boy Jason Robinson. Seven followed in the 2010s. So far in 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 laws in England, but there is a bigger factor at play.
The move to the NRL used to be reserved for high-profile superstars of the English game. Players such as Adrian Morley, Gareth Ellis, James Graham, Burgess and Sam Tomkins had to truly dominate in England before making the switch to Australia. However, in the past decade, the net has been cast much wider, along with the English diaspora Australia it spreads. Warrington Wolves captain George Williams, for example, will embark on his second stint in the NRL, following Saturday’s Super League Grand Final against Wakefield Trinity.
Moreover, the NRL adopted a policy of recruiting young stars very early on. Sunday’s NRL Grand Final will have Dom Young on the wing for Newcastle Knights, who has been in the NRL since joining from Huddersfield Giants as a 19-year-old.
The NRL now offers the financial boost and potential glory that a move to rugby union once offered. For former dual England international Chris Ashton, who switched to rugby union from Wigan Warriors at the age of 20, it’s a simple equation.
Along with Robinson, another former Wigan star, Ashton has been one of England’s biggest success stories of the century, earning 44 caps for his country, scoring a record 101 Gallagher PREM tries and setting a season Top 14 record with 24.
But changing the codes remains a risk, which neither league players nor union clubs in England are willing to take, Ashton said. RugbyPass recently.
“The NRL is a big factor now,” the pundit told TNT Sports. “It wasn’t before. If you’re a young kid in the Super League, you can go to the NRL and get a minimum contract of 150. So if you’re earning half that in the Super League and you’ve got a decent 18-, 19-year-old, you’re going to go and make the guaranteed minimum wage in the NRL, not that it’s going to change. before; it’s in place now.
“The time it takes, the commitment it takes for a rugby union club to bring a rugby league guy up to speed. It’s a bit different for some Fijian or Tongan players. They generally played a bit of union when they were kids, but a lot of Super League players, none of them played union. They didn’t play rugby near Wigan. They weren’t in Wigan. Union so I think there are two really big factors.
“And it’s hard to get these kids out of the towns. They all want to play for Wigan, for example. The kids are desperate to play for Wigan. It’s been tried many times to get some of the best kids and say, ‘Do you want to come and play in, say, Northampton?’ They would say, ‘I want to play for Wigan, why should I do that?’ So it’s hard to get them to move.”
That trend seems to be largely confined to England at the moment. Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii has led the charge to move league players to the Union in Australia in time for the 2027 World Cup. He was followed by Western Force’s Zac Lomax and the NRL Grand Final was followed by Sydney Roosters duo Angus Crichton and Mark Nawaqanitawase.
Perhaps at the home World Cup things would change again for England, but Ashton is less convinced. If anything, he believes the gulf between the two codes in England is widening, and after years of union theft of some of the league’s stars, that’s fair enough.
Potential converts would also see four of the last five leaguers to represent England in the union eventually reverting to the 13-man code. Even Ben Te’o, who enjoyed a successful six years in rugby union, won the Six Nations title with England and represented Great Britain and Ireland Lions In 2017, he eventually returned to the league.
“I think the gap is widening,” Ashton continued. “It’s becoming more segregated. I think there are a lot of rugby league kids that rugby union could get involved with but they’d be offended by that. And they should be, because we’re stealing their kids.”
One way to make the relationship more sustainable could be to make traffic between the codes go both ways. Nawaqanitawase returns to the union after switching codes along with Carter Gordon after the 2023 World Cup. Similarly, Sonny Bill Williams enjoyed two spells in both codes. Ardie Savea currently appears to be permanently linked with an NRL move. England’s Ben Earl has expressed his big dream to play in the NRL. Several players in England have made such a move towards the end of their careers, most notably Christian Wade, who briefly represented Wigan before returning to the union.
But such a move carries just as many risks, according to Ashton, who will continue to dissuade players.
“It’s just a risk. If you take Owen Farrell, for example, I have no doubt he would love to play for Wigan. When is the right time in your career to do that?”
“You’re not going to do that at the top of the union because it’s an unnecessary risk to go and go and try another sport that you might not be successful in when you’re already successful in one. Then you do it when you’re older and people might say, ‘Well, he’s passed, so why is he coming?’ So either way, you won’t win.
“I don’t want to say I did it right or wrong, but I was 20 years old. If it went wrong, and it almost did, I was young enough to come back and go again.”
One area where the ties don’t seem to be broken, albeit in a one-way direction, is coaching. Rugby coaching staffs in England seem to be populated by ex-leaguers. Ireland and Lions boss Andy Farrell and England men’s white whale Shaun Edwards are big success stories, but they are two of many former league players in the English game.
We are in a new era in the relationship between the two codes. For years, rugby union in England has benefited from the transfer of some of the best talent in rugby league, while relatively little has moved in the opposite direction. That dynamic has changed. With the NRL now offering young English players a clear pathway, strong financial rewards and a huge profile, the union can no longer assume that the league’s leading players will see switching codes as the obvious next step. The talent is still there, but increasingly rugby league itself is giving those players every reason to stay.