A L E AG U E OF THEIR OW N Exciting times past and ahead for Rugby League in the county, as the great game, founded in Yorkshire 125 years ago, looks forward to the opening of a dedicated museum and prepares for the 2021 Rugby League World Cup. Alice Bailey touches on the sport’s amazing achievements and groundbreaking goals going ‘prop’ forward.
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round 57 million people travel around the country to see their favourite sport or watch their team play each year. With day trips and overnight stays, they put more than 2.8 billion into the English economy alone. A good chunk of that cash ends up in Yorkshire with world-class cricket, Premier League football and of course our home-grown sport: Rugby League. COVID-19 permitting the global spotlight will be on the county next year when it plays host to the 2021 Rugby League World Cup. 6 of the 18 host towns and cities are in Yorkshire, which is only fitting as the sport, which started in the county, has just celebrated its 125th anniversary. Debate still rages over the precise origins of the game of rugby. For many years William Webb Ellis was lauded as its inventor after claims he picked up a ball in a football game at Rugby public school and ran with it in the 1820s. To this day the trophy awarded to the winner of the men’s Rugby World Cup, the premier international
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rugby union competition, bears his name, despite most historians now agreeing it was probably an early example of spinning a PR story rather than a rugby ball. What is more certain, is the origin of Rugby League and its proud roots in Yorkshire in 1895, but how and why did it happen? The rules of what we now know as football were formulated back in the 1860s but there were many different versions and some people weren’t happy with following the regulations set out with the founding of the Football Association in 1863. So, in 1871 a number of clubs playing the version of football favoured at Rugby School, which involved the handling of the ball, met to form the Rugby Football Union. Despite its roots in the privileged world of private education, Rugby was hugely popular in the north of England especially in Yorkshire and Lancashire where it was a largely a working-class game. This is where the problems started with a classic north south divide.
yorkshire.com
