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Rugby league was formed by breaking away from its parent body, commonly known as rugby union, over player payment issues. League had great initial success – implanting the game in France, a foothold in Wales, success in places like Italy, the then Yugoslavia, to Australia and New Zealand.
Domestically, the English rugby league championship rivalled association football for spectators, with semi-finals even attracting 70,000 plus crowds.
One of the most important factors in league’s limited global footprint was rugby union’s ability to shut the sport out of key conduits of power and influence; the civil, armed services, elite schools and the university system.
While sports like union and cricket were carried to all corners of the world map by the winds of British imperialism and influence, rugby league was stuck firmly in pockets of certain areas.
Those first rugby league administrators to cross with the ‘Northern Union’ (the sport’s founding name), were in many cases of equal status to their union counterparts- men of industry, influence and educated.
The sport initially flourished but they were more the old union type benefactors interested in running or ‘lording’ over a rugby league club, a great social status symbol in the industrial north.
Few enlightened league men where interested in spreading the game’s wings. Even more, it was a disaster when these men passed and not replaced by a new educated and influential pioneer.
The decline or halt of league development abroad could be seen by the end of the 1950’s. Though mostly working class rugby league people did emigrate, their largely modest background didn’t exactly lend itself to sport pioneering.
Therefore, a mixture of poor management with little international interest, the lack of a middle class ‘expat factor’ and concerted and deliberate exclusion from the precursors of development by powerful rugby union lobbyists, had all but hampered rugby league’s international growth.
Changing circumstances has seen the game accepted into universities for some decades now.
Until then, some ‘unofficial’ student league teams gathered under such aliases as ‘Vince Karalius XIII’ ( English player nicknamed the ‘raging bull’) for fear of being banned from other university clubs.
The armed services also welcomed the sport into the fold in the 1990’s. While rugby union has had 100 odd years of participation in these crucial conduits of sport development, rugby league is only starting to see the benefits of being part of the ‘system’.
Today, about 30 nations play league.
UK, NZ and Australian rugby league armed service and police squads now regularly tour such places as Jamaica, The USA, South Africa, Morocco, and the Pacific. The UK Pioneers (made up of Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English university students) have recently concluded a tour of Kazakhstan and prior, Malta.
Then there is the much-lambasted Lebanese Rugby League that continues to attract scorn as Aussies. Indeed the early days were very much driven by expats. But the expat factor has played a fundamental role in the development of all major sports abroad.
Lebanon is a true success story for the sport. Converted and educated ‘leaguies’ have now gone abroad to spread the game. As exemplified by Mikhael Shammas, a Lebanese Harvard Graduate, who started a club in Boston.
In October of this year, the now almost exclusively Lebanese-based rugby league will pass the baton of development to a new expat group made up of Pakistani players when they compete in a two match series in Tripoli.
Of any sport, rugby league deserves its place in global sport development.
Its growth and failures, is a part of what all sports have gone through. Gradually, a new generation of league aficionados are coming out. Their love of the game is for the game itself, the one that presents itself on the field. It is a game that has largely existed in markets that have provided a number of sporting options.
It is a game that does not exist by veiling itself in elitist terminology, mythology, corporate networking, moral high ground, obstructing or social favouritism. The biggest obstacles now are obtaining a slice of sponsorship, corporate backing, benevolence or TV exposure to grow.
Only the Mikhael Shammas’ of the new league world can unlock some of these riches.
Meanwhile, rugby union supporters should consign their prejudices to the waste bins of hypocrisy. There seems to be a light going on in the heads of many union people when they read their own journalists describe, for example, the current Tri Nations’ hand in ball and less kicking phenomenon as mirroring rugby league.
The likes of Will Genia and Quade Cooper, when given the chance, are able to show their individual ‘brilliance and flair’, so often denied by the game’s incessant kicking, rucks and mauls.
It’s no coincidence that this excites union supporters despite deriding league’s rules.
Rules that have not only created these types of player but allow them to show their brilliance on a weekly basis. Somehow ‘team’ and ‘individualism’, so well entwined in the game of rugby league, can co-exist. League’s movement 100 years prior to today was bold and innovative as it realised the need to compete for the public’s attention.
Too bad the obstacles placed before it negated this adventurous and equitable spirit for much of its existence.
League’s ‘nouveau’ supporters include the most exciting elements of middle and upper class support- one’s that have been attracted to the game by chance, attraction and opportunity. Once bitten, these supporters become the game’s tool for a better future.
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