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It
is the sport that demands the highest level of teamwork, dedication, strength
and determination known to human kind. It was born out of the desire of
the people to want and achieve more than they had, and to strive for a better
life, and a more fair and just society. Now, let’s pause for a moment,
and remember how far we’ve come. There was a time when leisure and choice
was a luxury only of the rich.
People worked Monday to Saturday all day
in horrible conditions for just enough money to survive on. During the
dark days of the Industrial Revolution and Victorian England most of the
northern rugby clubs were made up of these very same factory workers, and the
southern rugby clubs were made up of the well to do or aristocratic class. The
sport was governed from down south and those well to do’s wanted to keep the
game strictly amateur. This was of course because a gentleman could never
receive a wage for playing sport.
A cartoon lampooning the divide in rugby.
The caricatures are of Rev. Frank Marshall, an arch-opponent of broken-time payments and James Miller, a long-time opponent of Marshall.
The caption underneath reads:
Marshall: "Oh, fie, go away naughty boy, I don't play with boys who can’t afford to take a holiday for football any day they like!"
Miller: "Yes, that’s just you to a T; you’d make it so that no lad whose father wasn’t a millionaire could play at all in a really good team. For my part I see no reason why the men who make the money shouldn’t have a share in the spending of it."
Rugby
games were held on Saturdays. This was a work day for these workers and
the strictly amateur code meant that they couldn’t be paid for missing work, so
their families would do without the basic necessities of life, for a little bit
of Saturday afternoon glory.
This was a bleak and unforgiving world, so
most players chose to work in the factory, mill, or mine on a Saturday for that
extra 2 shillings, rather than play Rugby. The standard of play went down
and so did morale in the northern cities where these Rugby clubs were situated.
The Northern clubs got together and decided to break away and form the
Rugby Football League in 1895. They would pay players for missing work on
Saturdays and this ensured the best players were available. This also
ensured that ordinary working class people were able to play once again and not
have to suffer for it. So in its very origins Rugby League is a triumph
of the people.
Over
the next ten years rule changes were made to make the game the most exciting
spectator sport in the world. Thirteen players a side ensured more open expansive play. The play the ball rule
brings more free flowing play.
The
six-tackle rule brings the most exciting decisive elements to the sport, as one
team must score within six tackles or turnover the ball.
The
elimination of confusing and complex elements, like the contested rucks,
contested scrums, and line-outs, balanced with the retaining of key elements
like scoring tries, making tackles, and continuous time, have made Rugby League one
of the world’s most popular sports.
With
the Rugby League World Cup, 4 Nations, NRL, and Super League being just some of
the massive global competitions, Rugby League has become a massive sport and
industry, an industry of the people, spawned from change.
It is
that passion for change, and that satisfaction of the people’s need for high
impact, high octane, sporting spectacle’s, that give Rugby League its more
popular name, "The GREATEST GAME OF ALL."
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