Interesting take, though some spelling errors make it a difficult read on some paragraphs.
It’s here for you to read or not - ccs.
By STEVE MASCORD
KNEE-length trousers with belts, handlebar moustaches, fans in suits with cloth caps.
The footage that emerged this week of a game between Wigan and Hull from The Boulevard in 1902 was indeed magical. The colourised film was post on Twitter by a rugby film archive.
But there were other aspects of the film which reminded me of a recent preoccupation of mine: what IS rugby league? How do you define it?
Because Hull and Wigan each had 15 players on the pitch. There were rucks. There were mauls. I’m pretty sure I can see a line out.
Predictably, when I Tweeted the video, an Aussie said it was “not rugby league”. A South African said ‘union then?’. One clever fellow responded with a picture of a Model T Ford and posited that it was “not a car”.
But while for those of your caught up in the daily news cycle of the game, this may be pseudo-intellectual nonsense, having a position on what rugby league actually is can help you interpret and contextualise modern developments.
When a ‘rebel’ competition pops up, are those running it bad? When Peter V’landys changes a rule or makes a field goal worth two points, is he vandalising the sport?
As I tried to explain to the South African and the Australia, rugby league broke away in 1895 not as a new sport but as a social movement - if you’re Tony Collins - or a parochial and commercially voracious northern rugby union competition - if you’re Tom Mather.
Breakaways were only dispensed with in 1907.
The rules changed because it didn’t have to do what Twickenham told it to do after 1895. It changed the rules to make itself more attractive because it could, not because it wanted to distinguish itself from rugby union.
When International Rugby League goes to governments in Morocco, the UAE or South Africa and asks for recognition as a separate sport, those governments come back and ask why a Victorian-era boardroom schism in England have any impact on them in 2021? Rugby of all types is now an openly professional sport - why should they recognised two bodies to run it in their countries?
South Africa and the UAE will, it transpires, not. Rugby league will be overseen in this countries but rugby union authorities.
So what is rugby league? What defines it? For 12 years it had 15 players, no play-the-ball. For the last two years it had no scrums. The value of tries, drop goals and goals have all been fiddled with.
What is this thing that we have all spent much of our lives watching, taking about, writing about, spending money on?
I keep coming back to an answer that you might find unsettling. It’s apparent watching that restored footage. Clearly it’s rugby league because it’s Hull playing Wigan and that was outside the auspices of the Rugby Football Union.
Rugby league is, simply, that which is not rugby union.
It’s only rugby league because its run by rugby league administrators, the group that led the schism in the first place.
So James Maloney was wrong when he said “the players are your most important commodity. Without them, there is no game. Everyone who works around it are just accessories."
Without administrators, it wouldn’t be rugby league. And Jimmy would be a rugby union player.
