Rugby League

The sport is one full of history and with fans spread across the globe so it is no surprise that it has developed a number of nicknames, aside from simply been shortened to either ‘Rugby’ or ‘League’.

There is a distinct difference in the nicknames given to the sport in both the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere, especially in the sports heartland regions.

In the United Kingdom fans will know the sport of RL, Rugby, League or even as Super League due to the popularity and dominance of the top flight competition.

On the continent, the sport is often known as Rugby XIII or Rugby 13, due of course to it been the 13 player code.

Over in Oceania, the sport is the domain code of football so whereas Association football in Europe gets called football or footy, it is the 13 aside code of Rugby that goes by the name of football and especially footy.

In Australia and New Zealand, the name League is used predominantly to describe the sport and to differentiate it from the 15 man code whilst those in Australia will also call the sport as a whole, NRL due to the incredible popularity of the southern hemispheres top flight competition.

If you are a fan of the sport, you will know just how widespread it has become in the last decade or so, to the point where there are few places on earth where the sport isn’t played.

Whilst it is mostly on an amateur or semi-professional level in most places it is played, their have been huge strides forward across the Pacific Islands, across the Balkan Regions and also in Africa and North America to develop the sport and these are quickly becoming the new heartlands of the sport.

There are few places where the sport is the dominant sport with Papua New Guinea and the Cook Islands been the only countries in the world to have the sport as their National Sport and it is in PNG where great advances have been made with a semi-professional local league now headed by a full time professional team playing in a top Australian competition.

The most successful RL competition in the world, and the biggest, richest, and most supported rugby competition of either code, is the NRL (National Rugby League) in Australia that also features a team from New Zealand and attracts the best players from across the world.

The sport’s biggest playing pools and largest support bases are found in England, Australia, New Zealand, France, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, and Lebanon, whilst Wales also have professional teams and a growing strength in depth.

On the back of the extra profile from the Toronto Wolfpacks run in the English professional leagues, the sport has really started to develop in North America, with Canada leading the way but with lots of improvement in the United States.
Amongst the other countries to enjoy growth in the sport are Chile, Ghana, Philippines, Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Hungary, Turkey, Thailand, Brazil and Nigeria.

In a sign of the infighting and self-preservation that has continued to hold back the sport throughout its entire history, Rugby League was established back in 1895 as a number of northern based rugby clubs decided to break away from the Rugby Football Union to form their own competition known originally as the Northern Rugby Football Union (NRFU) at an historic meeting held at the George Hotel in Huddersfield.

The main reason for this schism between the now rival codes was down, as it is always tends to be, to money with the northern based clubs wanting to turn professional and to pay their players.

The majority of the player sin the north came form working class backgrounds, often with jobs in the mills and mines found in the towns and cities the clubs are based in whilst southern clubs were based in richer areas and it was believed that those players could afford to play for the love of the sport.

All in all over 200 clubs left the established set up to join the breakaway competition, but the sport remained pretty much the same to start with.

Changes did quickly occur however as the 2 codes started to develop their own methods, structures, and styles to where we now have 2 completely different sports.

The first big change came in 1897 when the line-out was disregarded, whilst in 1898 professionalism was introduced with the top players now dedicated all of their time to the sport on a full time basis.

By 1906, the sport was now known as the Northern Union and in that year, the most iconic change to the sport was made as the change form 15 players to 13 players a side was made and instead of the boring ruck still employed in the other code, the play the ball restart after a tackle was established and the sport now started to be recognisable as Rugby League, the sport that we all now love.

Just a year later, a similar schism occurred on the other side of the world as many clubs, players and official across New Zealand and Australia saw the new sport and liked what they saw.

That led to the formation of the New South Wales Rugby Football League (NSWRFL) been formed at the Bateman’s Hotel in George Street, Sydney and from there the sport over took Rugby Union as the dominant code in the country and the domain sport across the key Eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland.

Although lots of tweaks, improvements and changes occurred over the next 40 years, the next major change and moment of history for the sport came in 1954, when a world record crowd for any rugby match of 102,569 watch the Challenge Cup final replay held at Odsal Stadium in Bradford, although it was thought that there were many more in attendance with lots of fans climbing fences to get in.

In that same year, the Rugby League World Cup, the first world cup of either come, was established, and played in France.

The next huge changes to the sport came in 1966 when teams were limited to 3 play of the balls before a scrum was given on the fourth tackle. That changed to 6 tackles in 1972 and in 1983, the scrum was changed to a handover in the same way the sport is played to this very day.

In 1967,the first ever professional match was played on a Sunday whilst sponsors first entered the sport for the 1971-72 season.

In the 1990’s the growing popularity of satellite television and the acceptance of fans to pay to watch sport on television led to the formation of a new top flight competition- the Rugby Super League.

In Europe, the sport moved from winter to summer and Paris St Germain became the first French team to play in a British competition whilst on the other side of the world, the 90’s was dominated by the Super League Wars.

This saw 2 rival competitions battle it out for dominance in the country but as tends to happen with that sort of thing, it hindered both competitions but thankfully common sense prevailed and a new competition was started with clubs from across the country coming together to form the NRL.

Over the past couple of decades the sport has focussed on developing new leagues and countries and to grow the playing pool from outside of the sports heartlands.

This has led to new full time professional teams in France (Catalans Dragons and Toulouse Olympique leading the way), in Papua New Guinea and in Fiji whilst new semi-professional league are popping up across the globe.