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Brave visionaries fought for working-class rugby rights

22 clubs break away from the RFU to form Northern Union

Batley win the first Northern Union – now Challenge Cup – final

Teams reduced from 15-a-side to 13, play-the-ball introduced

First international tour made by RU rebels the New Zealand ‘All Golds’

Title of Northern Rugby Football Union changed to Rugby Football League

Wembley hosts Challenge Cup final for the first time

First World Cup staged, Great Britain beating hosts France in final

Limited tackles introduced at four, later increased to six in 1972

Try value increased from three to four points

First season of Super summer rugby and widespread full-time professionalism

League,

WITH Queen Victoria on the throne, Oscar Wilde in jail and sixmonth old Babe Ruth really a baby, a group of visionaries changed the face of British sport.

On this day 125 years ago, August 29, 1895, 21 bold men – years ahead of their time – held a meeting in Huddersfield that created the sport of rugby league.

Representatives from clubs across the north of England gathered in a room in the George Hotel and voted to break away from the RFU and form the Northern Union.

This was due to the RFU’S refusal to allow payments for playing rugby, with the largely working-class north struggling to take time off their jobs without compensation.

It was a dispute that had been developing for years.

In 1891, the Leeds president James Miller said: “Rugby is no longer the pastime of the public schools and the leisured classes alone.

“It has become the sport of the masses – of the wage-earning classes in our great manufacturing centres.

“It is unreasonable to expect the same ‘amateurism’ from the wage-earning classes as from public school men. It is unfair to expect working men to break time to play football without their being remunerated.”

But a move to allow payments was rejected at a RFU vote in 1893 and Huddersfield, Leigh, Salford and Wigan all found themselves suspended for breaching rules.

As a result, those 21 men came together in Huddersfield to split the code two years later.

Respected sports historian Professor Tony Collins (inset below, bottom) said: “The reason they met at the George Hotel was because their backs had been forced to the wall.

“Rugby, wherever it was played in the north in the 1890s, had become hugely popular, especially by industrial workers. The Rugby

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Football Union people were very afraid that those people would threaten their place at the head of rugby. The northern clubs campaigned for ‘Broken Time’ to give compensation for players that took time off work.

“But rugby union had decided it wanted to be an amateur sport – you couldn’t be paid to play the game and if you were you were expelled.

“They suspected that they would get picked off one-by-one and came together to form the Northern Rugby Football Union, which became the Rugby Football League.”

Leeds Rhinos legend Jamie Jonesbuchanan (inset below, top) believes that day 125 years ago remains relevant today.

He said: “That meeting certainly shaped rugby league’s identity and personality.

“It was a northern sport that broke away through a degree of rebellion, because rawboned, working-class people that had to earn a living couldn’t afford to miss work at the weekend.

“But the thing that really stands out about that meeting is that whenever there’s adversity, people in rugby league tend to come together. “The sport is facing another huge challenge with Covid at the moment. But you get the impression that during adversity is when it’s at its strongest, and that is its personality shining through.”