1895: The Birth of Rugby League

Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

The governing body of "rugby" - the Rugby Football Union - had been formed in 1871 by representatives of 21 clubs. All of these clubs were located in southern England and most were within London itself.

By the early 1890's rugby had become widespread and well over half the RFU's clubs were in northern England. The working classes of the north of England and south Wales were particularly taken with rugby over soccer.

As with rugby clubs right across England, the majority of the clubs of the North were created and operated by men of the ruling classes. However, as the majority of the population in Yorkshire and Lancashire was working class, the clubs, teams and crowds quickly displayed a cross-class nature.

Hull FC was formed in 1865 by a young gentlemen who had been at Rugby School and immediately took on members who were plumbers and glaziers. An ever rarer example was Leeds Athletic which was started by working men on their own initiative. It began with an advertisement in a local newspaper placed by a rail clerk.

Other clubs had religious affiliations at the start which are now long forgotten, but others such as Wakefield Trinity were marked by this for the rest of their existence. Wakefield was formed in 1873 as a sporting arm of the Holy Trinity Church Young Men's Society.

In Lancashire, rugby was started at Rochdale in 1867 by a magistrate and numerous business owners and self-employed men. Within a year they were all playing alongside new members when working class men were allowed to join as well. This club was the forerunner of the Rochdale Hornets who arrived in 1871 with an open door approach to membership. At Rochdale they were also able to insist on gate money as they played on an enclosed field.

This became an increasing tendency in the North. Some clubs though, like Wigan, did not have an enclosed field and had to rely on crowd donations from collection boxes.

There was general acknowledgement that the rugby teams of Yorkshire and Lancashire were the strongest in England and had been so since the 1870's.

These counties were the first (in 1870) to rise above club level rugby and introduce representative games (Yorkshire v Lancashire) - these games were held before the southerners had even formed their collective RFU.

When a national county championship "was at last permitted" in 1889, Yorkshire won the initial title and then eventually won seven of the first eight years. The only year they lost it was to fellow northerners Lancashire!

The rugby playing working class men though were at a distinct disadvantage to their gentlemen counterparts. Players who were miners and factory workers were not permitted to leave work on Saturdays (match days) until 1pm, while the self-employed and gentry had no such restriction.

The working man might have been able to play in a home game without much difficulty, but an away match was out of the question. If he was a miner, as many were, even turning out in a home game was a major achievement.

Miners were only paid for time that they were actually hewing coal. Travelling to and from the surface was in the employee's time, no matter how far down the mine it was.

This resulted in enthusiastic rugby players having to forgo pay to play rugby. It also meant that they were subsequently first in line for retrenchment if the mining industry fell on hard times.

Players though were paid by clubs on an expediency basis across Britain and this was largely ignored by the RFU.

While clubs in the South of England were poaching players (via payments) to bolster their ranks, clubs in the North were paying working class players to ensure they could take the field.

This was critical in the North as the working class were the majority of the community. Without payment to working class players, even if just for lost time ("broken-time"), the clubs would not have been able to have their best players on the field - which would affect their on-field results and crowds.

However, this situation changed when the RFU, encouraged by "gentlemen" rugby clubs, determined that such flouting of the amateur rules was to stop.

They had seen what had happened to soccer when the FA prevented a Northern split in 1884 by allowing professionalism - the game and the clubs quickly became dominated by the working class. The RFU was determined they would not follow the same path.

Clubs in Yorkshire were of particular concern for the RFU by their "open rugby" approach to club membership. They allowed anyone to join, even though they were financed or owned by the middle and ruling classes. Many other clubs, mostly in the South, followed the wishes of the RFU (and themselves) by staunchly remaining gentlemen's clubs to the exclusion of all others.

The RFU took the view that paying players money for turning out in a rugby team, for whatever reason, was not acceptable.

The RFU heralded that any club or player involved in professional payments needed to be sought out and punished. There were even those who had become zealots for the cause of amateur rugby who investigated and reported any inference of a breach they could find. Yet the RFU and many of its clubs were still openly paying players and sometimes even other clubs.

The 20-man British team (all Northerners bar one) that toured Australia in 1888 were all paid, including captain Andrew Stoddart who received over 200 pounds - yet his public profile paralysed the RFU from acting. The tour itself was operated by two entrepreneurs looking to turn a profit, yet it was sanctioned by the RFU.

In 1887 the Blackheath club was paid 4 pounds a player by Bradford to secure a game.

While a "gentlemen" was permitted to claim legitimate expenses, working class players were told "if they can't afford to play, they should go without the game".

From the early 1890's this clash of the classes began to tear at the fabric of the structure of the RFU and its relationship with the Northern players and thus their clubs.

"Amateurism" was the term given to the RFU's drive to ensure the working class did not gain control of the game. The resulting suspensions and expulsions for those involved in the "professional" payments meant the Northern clubs stopped paying their players.

The clubs and their middle-class owners (i.e. management committee) had no desire to leave the RFU and they were for a time brought under control.

But with matches being cancelled and their best players regularly missing, the Northern clubs sought a compromise and put forward a proposal to allow payments solely for "broken-time".

Although, this was far from unaminous in many clubs and much in-fighting occurred. The RFU stood firm and declared that paying for "broken-time" would only encourage more time to be spent playing rugby and would lead to "professional" full-time rugby players.

The reality then facing the Northern clubs was that to remain in the RFU and adhere to amateurism rules would require them to continue without working class players.

In the counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire, such an act would have meant the end of the existence of the clubs and the game.

The owners of the clubs had little option other than to fight - they were also the owners of local industries and being a part of denying the masses access to their favoured game would not have proved prudent.

In 1895 the movement for the creation of a Northern Rugby Union outside of the control of the RFU had a reached a crescendo.

In one final effort to reign in the rising upheavel the RFU broadened its definition of "professionalism" to include playing on a ground where gate money was taken and/or any game to be played with less than 15 men-a-side.

The RFU knew that some of the northern clubs had been contemplating reducing the number of players in teams to less than 15 to improve the crowd appeal - in fact the RFU had even considered the option itself in 1892.

As a result in August 1895 the clubs in the working class counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire jumped before they were pushed.

But this wasn't a mere loss of just 22 clubs from the RFU. In 1890 there were about 240 rugby (RFU) clubs in the two counties, however by 1900 this had reduced to less than 25 clubs - the rest had left. In 1904 the Northern Union had more clubs affiliated to it than the RFU.

By such time the Northern clubs were in the hands of milder middle-class owners such as shop keepers and small business owners. The industrial owners of the textile factories and mines had long gone from the Northern clubs and the class separation was complete.

Thus the Great Divide of 1895 produced two new sports from the shared "rugby" parent - not the minor loss of an unimportant appendage as the RFU has forever since portrayed it.

The split would also ensure that RU would forever polarise itself as a middle-class game and live its "amateur" lie for a further hundred years.

On 29 August 1895 twenty-one clubs met at The George Hotel in Huddersfield and formed the Northern Rugby Union (later to become known as Rugby League).

The clubs and their year of foundation were: Batley 1880, Bradford 1863, Brighouse Rangers 1878, Broughton Rangers 1877, Dewsbury 1875, Halifax 1873, Huddersfield 1864, Hull 1865, Hunslet 1883, Leeds 1890, Leigh 1877, Liversedge 1877, Manningham 1876, Oldham 1876, Rochdale Hornets 1871, St Helens 1874, Tyldesley 1879, Wakefield Trinity 1873, Warrington 1875, Widnes 1873, Wigan 1879. Dewsbury withdrew a few days later and were replaced by Runcorn (1876). Stockport was also accepted by telephone at the meeting at The George.

The inaugural competition which the 22 founding clubs played for was called the Northern Rugby Football League (NRL).

In a very ambitious competition, each team had to play every other on a home and away basis. In the days of slow transportation a journey across the two adjoining counties was a long day indeed, with teams often not arriving home until midnight.

Intra-county games also counted for points for the awarding of county champions in the Yorkshire and Lancashire Cups.

The adminstrators acted over the coming years and changed the rules of the game (abolishing line-outs, reduced teams to 13-a-side and introducing the play-the-ball being the main variations) to improve the attractiveness of the spectacle and therefore paying crowds.

Rugby league had begun.