Rugby's Great Split: Class, Culture and the Origins of Rugby League Football

This classic sport history title explores rugby in late Victorian and Edwardian England and examines how class conflict tore rugby apart and led to the creation of rugby league. At its heart is an explanation of how a game for public schoolboys was transformed into a sport which became entirely identified with the working classes of northern England. This text deals with the development of amateurism and professionalism, England's north-south divide, the relationship between rugby and masculinity, and the rise of commercialized sport. It focuses on how working-class men and women became involved in rugby and the hostile reaction to them from rugby's middle-class leaders. The author describes how the war for rugby's soul led to the 1895 split and the creation of a new sport. The new Northern Union immediately allowed, "broken-time" payments to players, developed a distinct ideology of its own and gradually introduced rule changes which created the game of rugby league.

Tony Collins is Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University