Rugby League’s men’s World Cup kicks off on Saturday when England take on Samoa in Newcastle. It’s the 16th iteration of a tournament first played in France in 1954. But, if 10 years previously, you’d asked any French player taking part in that inaugural competition whether they’d ever foresee playing a World Cup on home soil they’d have laughed (or more likely wept) in your face. And that’s because in 1944, in Nazi-controlled France, rugby league was illegal. But why? It seems a preposterous notion today. Who would outlaw an entire sport, and on what possible basis?
The two codes of rugby – league and union – have long had a fractious relationship first forged in August 1895 when a group of clubs in northern England demanding they be allowed to pay their players for missing work shifts split from the strictly amateur Rugby Football Union (RFU) in London. And while détente, even grudging acknowledgement, now exists between the two since unions joined league in becoming professional three decades ago, some wounds run deep. And nowhere deeper than in France. It is often said that watching French rugby league (or rugby a treize) is as much a political statement as it is a sporting one.
