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

by Tony Collins, James Anthony Mangan (Editor)

Since it’s first publication, Rugby’s Great Split has established itself as a classic in the field of sport history. Drawing on an unprecedented range of sources, this deeply researched and highly readable book traces the social, cultural and economic divisions that led, in 1895, to schism in the game of rugby and the creation of rugby league, the sport of England’s northern working class. Tony Collins’ analysis challenges many of the conventional assumptions about this key event in rugby history – about class conflict, amateurism in sport, the North-South divide, violence on the pitch, the development of mass spectator sport and the rise of football. This new edition is expanded to cover parallel events in Australia and New Zealand, and to address the key question of rugby league’s failure to establish itself in Wales. Rugby’s Great Split is a benchmark text in the history of rugby, and an absorbing case study of wider issues – issues of class, gender, regional and national identity, and the impact of the commercialization and recent professionalization of rugby league. This insightful text is for anyone interested in Britain’s social history or in the emergence of modern sport, it is vital reading.

308 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 1998

Reviews

[Malcolm]

Tony Collins's history of the emergence of two rugby football codes in the late 19th century is an exceptional piece of social and sports history that debunks the simple explanation of causes, undermines the conventional views of professionalism and amateurism in British sport, and is quite simply a fine read.

[James]

Collins argued that the split in English rugby in 1895 was driven by fears of working class takeover of the sport by middle class professionals, rather than regionalism as is commonly argued, though Northern identity was pushed by northern industrialists after the split. This fear of independent working class power was overwhelming the sport, by which all the players, crowds, and officials would be from lesser classes, made the professional and landed gentry work to stem working class power by making a stand against professionalism, since working class people wanted to be compensated for superior play, whether because of missed work or because of the high quality. Middle class players played to prove manliness and honor, leading to different styles of play, where working class violence tended to be open and regulated while middle class violence tended to be sneaky and to the side. As the sport became more and more popular, throughout the country, the administrators feared what happened in soccer, and blocked any attempt to legalize payments to players, despite the legality of reimbursement for expenses. This led to clubs in Yorkshire and Lancashire to breakaway and form the Northern Union, commonly called League Rugby, where more of a management-labor structure was set up, and soon professionalism became the norm in NU, copied throughout much of the rugby playing world, especially after All-Blacks from New Zealand toured the country. Though Association football would surpass both the amateur RFU and professional NU, NU was now set up as inclusive, selling sport to all segments of society, while RFU was exclusionary domain of public school boys.

Key Themes and Concepts:
-Professional was dog whistle for working class.
-Both North and South administrators oppose professionalism, but Northern tried to stem it with “broken time” payments to players, which Southern administrators oppose. After the split, professionalism quickly took over the NU.
-Violence for working class people was seen as more of a threat than when middle class people did the same thing. Northern crowds tended to have more women and was rowdier.
-Rugby was the most popular club mass sport, where individual clubs became symbols of civic pride in the 1880s.

[Graham Hughes]

An absorbing, in-depth look at the social and cultural forces that led rugby in northern England to tear itself apart in the late 19th century. Its largely academic tone is leavened nicely by quotes, anecdotes and some period cartoons that have stood the test of time pretty well.

A mild warning: Collins is quite clearly on the 'league' side of the rugby fence, and his bias might grate a little with some union devotees. Then again, plenty of written material has come from the opposite viewpoint, much of it far more partial than Rugby's Great Split.