A furious row broke out between rugby union and rugby league this week, when the latter responded to the union's high-profile poaching of former Kangaroo World Cup winning league wingers Wendell Sailor and Mat Rogers (who has 'copped' some fierce verbal abuse subsequently) by posturing as if it was going to target the likes of George Gregan and Stephen Larkham.

The Australian Rugby Union's chief executive John O'Neill responded thus: It's just extraordinary that after years of poaching, raping and pillaging rugby union, they lose two players and it's like you've stabbed them in the heart."

In turn, his NRL counterpart David Moffet said: "Ultimately the board refused to be drawn into what has become a very orchestrated media campaign to engage in public sniping at another game. If that (O'Neill's) response is a view of the ARU, one would only be able to call them hypocrites."

Their fears won't have been helped by an assertion from John 'Knuckles' Connolly, ex-Queensland coach now at Stade Francais though a self-confessed league fan who accidentally drifted into Union, in his Sun-Herald column which began: "Rugby League is an international sport on its knees just waiting to be buried forever."