{"id":103278,"date":"2025-08-29T01:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T01:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/103278\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T01:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T01:42:10","slug":"happy-birthday-rugby-league-130-years-old-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/103278\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy birthday Rugby League\u2014130 years old today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fair to say the English Super League has seen better days.<\/p>\n<p>Yet for all of its <a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/rugby-league\/news\/nrl-takeover-super-league-expansion-peter-vlandys-nigel-wood\/d576a3aefbf733dd8463cf8c\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">current turmoil<\/a>, rugby league fans the world over will be forever indebted to the role its forefathers played in giving us the \u2018greatest game of all\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>On this day 130 years ago\u2014<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rugby-league.com\/governance\/about-the-rfl\/history-&amp;-heritage\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">29 August 1895<\/a>\u2014a group of disgruntled English rugby union clubs met in the George Hotel in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, voting to break away from the resolutely amateur Rugby Football Union (RFU) in a long-running dispute over various issues including the delicate, and outlawed, matter of player compensation payments.<\/p>\n<p>Collectively, 21 clubs formed the Northern Rugby Football Union that day and the first game followed shortly after on 7 September 1895.<\/p>\n<p>MORE: <a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/rugby-league\/news\/when-nrl-finals-2025-dates-tickets-and-who-plays-who\/6b72142509de1557e73b8aa0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Everything you need to know about the NRL Finals<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Within fifteen years of that inaugural meeting, hundreds of RFU clubs had left to join the \u2018rugby league\u2019 and the rest is history.<\/p>\n<p>The rules of the game were gradually changed to create the rugby league we know today, with teams reduced from fifteen to thirteen players, line-outs abolished and rucks replaced with a play-the-ball after tackles.<\/p>\n<p>1907, rugby league is born in Australia<\/p>\n<p>More than 17,000 kilometres away, the pioneering <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nma.gov.au\/exhibitions\/league-of-legends\/game-begins#:~:text=The%20first%20full%20season%20of,Newtown\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">New South Wales Rugby League<\/a> was founded on 8 August 1907 with the first full season of rugby league in Australia taking place in Sydney in 1908 with nine clubs. (Club football started in Queensland a year later in 1909.)<\/p>\n<p>At the end of that first 1908 season an Australian representative rugby league side even travelled to England.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Alas, for all its history, the tour was something of a disaster with the Australian side losing 22 of 45 matches on the field, while the organisers reportedly lost fistfuls of money off it.<\/p>\n<p>In 1922, the Northern Rugby Football Union became officially known as the \u2018Rugby Football League\u2019, the name the English governing body continues to operate under today.<\/p>\n<p>Happy birthday rugby league.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fair to say the English Super League has seen better days. Yet for all of its current turmoil,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-103278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}