Rugby Reloaded

Gus Risman was one of the greatest of Cardiff’s rugby codebreakers. The son of immigrants who grew up in Tiger Bay, he played top-class rugby league for more than a quarter of a century, was a Championship and Challenge Cup winner with two clubs, and captained the 1946 Lions. Not only that, but he also captained the Wales in war-time rugby union internationals while a rugby league player. This wee...

You often hear talk about the 'Corinthian Spirit' in sport. But who were the Corinthians? And why has the club's name passed into the folklore of almost all the football codes? This week's 'Rugby Reloaded' talks to Professor Dil Porter about his book 'English Gentlemen and World Soccer: Corinthians, Amateurism and the Global Game' (co-written with Dr Chris Bolsmann) which looks at the history of C...

This week's episode talks to award-winning journalist Carolyn Hitt about the BBC's 'Rugby Codebreakers' documentary on the Welsh rugby players, many of whom were black, who left Wales to play rugby league. We talk about the personal journey she went on as the presenter of the programme, the history of Welsh players 'going North', the differing responses of league and union fans, racism in rugby, a...

135. Brian Carney on rugby league & Gaelic football by Tony Collins

This week’s ‘Rugby Reloaded’ talks to Helena Byrne, web archive curator at the British Library’s Web Archive Unit, about sports history web archiving and her work with the Mapping Irish Women’s Football Project, which charts the history of women’s involvement in all football codes in Ireland. Helena also talks about her fascinating research into the unique story of women’s indoor football in Irela...

On Friday the Super League clubs deferred a decision whether Toronto Wolfpack could take part in the 2021 competition. But what can be learnt from British rugby league's attempts to expand beyond northern England since the 1900s? Is it doomed to failure or are the lessons going unheeded... and why might Canada offer an answer? For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a l...

Rugby's relationship with television is starting change. As the Rugby Football League annouces that it is putting its TV rights out to tender, this week's 'Rugby Reloaded' looks at the game's historic relationship with the BBC. Over-dependency on TV money, concerns about the style of presentation and a constant comparison with other codes - just as in 2020, these were the same problems that faced...

On 14 September 1980 Fulham rugby league club ran out for its first match at Craven Cottage and the professional game returned to London. But the history of London rugby league stretches back to 1908 and Fulham were the latest attempt to establish a pro club in the capital. So what does the past forty years tell us about rugby league expansion in London? The new 'Rugby Reloaded' explores the strug...

The new Premier League season starts this week so, as Leeds Utd once again take their place in the top flight, the new 'Rugby Reloaded' looks at the secret history of the origins of professional soccer in Leeds. It's a tale of intrigue, double-dealing and concealed conflicts of interest of businessmen and journalists that led to the death of a rugby league club and the birth of commercial soccer....

Last week marked the 25th anniversary of rugby union abandoning amateurism and legalising professionalism. To mark the occasion, we chat with former Wallaby prop and CEO of Gainline Analytics, Ben Darwin. Ben played before and after 1995 and experienced rugby as an amateur and a professional, so he brings his personal insights as well as a deep knowledge of both rugby codes to our discussion about...

This week's special edition marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of rugby league, with guest presenter Dr Kevin Moore interviewing me about my new book 'Rugby League: A People's History' which is published this week by scratchingshedpublishing.com. We talk about the origins of the sport, the strengths and weaknesses of its culture, and its prospects in the 21st Century. In 13 questions, we...

Less than a year after the end of World War 2 rugby league’s Lions toured Australia and New Zealand - a tour made possible thanks to an aircraft carrier, a military train & the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations. This week's ‘Rugby Reloaded’ tells the story of the incredible 1946 ‘Indomitables’, the tour that relaunched international rugby league. For more on the history of ru...

9 August would have been the closing ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but... The new 'Rugby Reloaded' takes a look at rugby union's early Olympic history, starting with the 1900 tournament where the British team did not bother to turn up for a match and ending with the 1924 final that ended in violence. In between, club teams took part, Cornwall contested a final, and the USA won two gold meda...

Whenever there's a debate between Australian union and league fans, someone will very quickly raise the question of World War One. League, so the argument goes, only became the dominant rugby code in Australia because union stopped playing during the war. The implication is that rugby league took advantage of the war to get the upper-hand over union. But nothing in this debate is quite as it seems...

Roy Francis was the first black athlete to play for Great Britain in 1947. He was one of Wales' great rugby league players. Even more significantly, he was the godfather of modern coaching, taking Hull to the Championship in 1956. It's high time his achievements were recognised, so this week's episode looks at the campaign to rename the Grand Final Player of the Match award as the 'Roy Francis Tro...

123. Prescott's Match and the Secret History of the 1958 Lions Tour by Tony Collins

Of all the football codes, rugby union has faced the most troubled times during the Coronvirus pandemic. Wage disputes, club v country clashes, and the splitting apart of the game in the Southern Hemisphere have thrown the game's long-time issues into sharp light. So, for an insight into the game's problems, this week's episode talks to rugby union analyst Rhiannon Garth Jones about where the spor...

Saturday 4 July marked the 50th anniversary of the last time the Great Britain Lions won the rugby league Ashes. This week's episode looks back at the tour which summed up all the political tensions and latent hostilities that exploded between Britain and Australia in the 1960s - and then asks perhaps the most important question in rugby league: why can't the Poms beat the Aussies anymore? For mor...

Last week Rugby League Cares, the sport's charitable arm, announced that the new National Rugby League Museum is going to be housed at the George Hotel in Huddersfield, the birthplace of the game. In this special museum episode, I discuss the plans for the museum with Dr Kevin Moore, former CEO of the National Football Museum, and answer listeners' questions about the project.

This week's 'Rugby Reloaded' talks to one of Britain's pioneers in sports performance analysis, Rob Lowe. In the early 1990s Rob founded the first company that collected and analysed rugby league performance stats; from there he moved on to rugby union and soccer, and became a director of Opta Sports. We spoke about the origins of stats, the impact they've had on coaching in the rugby codes, and w...

How do you market Championship (second tier) rugby league? And what difference does promotion and relegation make to marketing strategies? This week's episode talks to marketing expert Kacy Mackreth about her research into the marketing (or lack thereof) of rugby below the Super League level. What went wrong with the licensing, or franchise, model and how badly did the Middle-Eight play-off formul...

Are Crystal Palace the oldest professional soccer club in the world? I'm joined this week again by Dr Kevin Moore to discuss whether Palace's recent claim has any substance (spoiler alert: no) and, more importantly, to ask what exactly is football history and how we should do it. For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (which also has sho...

Where does British rugby league go after the pandemic? This week's 'Rugby Reloaded' welcomes back former St Helens CEO Sean McGuire to look at the tasks facing rugby league in the new post-Covid (perhaps) future. We discuss transparency in the game, deferential attitudes, 'Workington Man', the need for an independent strategic report into the game and pretty much everything else. For more on the h...

For seventy years, the axis of world supremacy in rugby union revolved around New Zealand and South Africa. This week's episode examines how that rivalry was fueled in the inter-war years, via drawn test series, contrasting styles, national pride and, crucially, the exclusion of Maori and all dark-skinned players to appease South Africa's racist policies. If you want to understand Southern Hemisph...

In May 1996 Wigan played union and Bath played league in a historic clash of the rugby codes. Each won a match in their own code but, between the two matches, Wigan also won union's Middlesex 7s. It was 100 years since rugby's great split, but the differences that tore the game apart then were just as apparent in 1996. The playing styles and stereotypes of the Victorian age continued to burn brigh...