A general comment.
I played a lot of rugby. I started out at flanker, moved to wing due to my speed, back to flanker and then to prop. Each role has its skills and its own flavour of excitement. The problem for so many non-players is that back play is relatively easy to understand, whereas a lot of forward play is obscure, in more than one way.
Watch how the pack reacts to a prop who has just outplayed his opposite in the scrum. Most people outside the game won't have spotted the detail, much less understood it, but they can see and enjoy spectacular running and tackling.
That dichotomy is why I prefer Union to League, because League is so much more one-dimensional. RL has its moments, but there is much more variety in RU.
On a far more basic factor, the backs don't get to do all that pretty-pretty running unless that dark and obscure work by the forwards is done. And drop-goals are far from boring.