Rugby Reloaded #126 - Rugby Union and the Olympic Games →

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 medals.

This was a very different Olympic tradition to the commercial juggernaut of today's Games.

The 1908 Wallaby team that defeated Cornwall for the 1908 gold medal. Seven would soon switch to league.

Rugby Reloaded #125 - World War One and Australian rugby's great myth →

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, so this week's episode looks at how the war-time league/union divide reflected much deeper divisions in Australian society.

You can find more information on the rugby codes in World War in Rodney Noonan’s paper of rugby league in the great here; in Tom Hickie’s books A Sense of Union: A History of Sydney University FC (1998) and The Game for the Game Itself : The Development of Sub-District Rugby in Sydney (1983).

The Glebe-Balmain rugby union team in Sydney, which went through the 1917 season with just two losses.

Rugby Reloaded #124 - Roy Francis & the Harry Sunderland Trophy →

Roy Francis was the first black athlete to play for Great Britain in 1947, and was one of Wales' greatest rugby league players. But even more significantly, he was the godfather of modern coaching, starting at Hull in 1949 where he transformed an average team into a powerhouse of the game, coaching them to three consecutive Championship finals, winning in 1956 and 1958, and two Wembley finals. In 1963 he moved to Leeds where he built a team famed for its fast, free-flowing rugby.

It's high time his achievements were recognised, so this week's podcast looks at the campaign to rename the Grand Final Player of the Match award as the 'Roy Francis Trophy', and tells the contrasting stories of Roy Francis and Harry Sunderland, after whom the trophy is currently named.

For more on Roy, take a look at Squidge Rugby’s YouTube video ‘So Who Was Roy Francis?’ and ‘Celebrating Roy Francis’ by Hull FC historian Bill Dalton.The Australian Dictionary of Biography entry on Harry Sunderland by Brisbane rugby league historian Edmund Scott can be accessed here. Robert Gate’s obituary to Roy, in which Robert explains Roy’s view of Harry Sunderland, is in issue 11 of Code 13 (June 1989), pp. 4-5.

Roy Francis on the Hull FC bench in 1953. L to R: Johnny Whiteley, Norman Hockley, Bill Riches, Roy Francis, Albert Tripp, Mick Scott and Bob Coverdale

Rugby Reloaded #123 - 'Prescott's Match' & the Secret History of the 1958 Lions' Tour →

Sunday was the 62nd anniversary of Great Britain's Ashes series win in Australia. The 1958 Lions tour was famous for 'Prescott's Match' when an injury-ravaged Lions led by Alan Prescott, who played for 78 minutes with a broken arm, defeated Australia.

But behind the scenes, this was the most controversial tour of all, plagued by management disputes and player rebellion. This week's 'Rugby Reloaded' takes the lid off one of the great tours in rugby league history.

You can see the 1958 Lions playing against a Sydney representative team below:

Rugby Reloaded #122 - Rugby Union after the Pandemic, with Rhiannon Garth Jones →

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.

For an insight into the game's problems, this week's episode talks to rugby union analyst Rhiannon Garth Jones about where the sport stands today and where it is going. You can read Rhiannon’s rugby journalism and analysis at RugbyPass.com.

Rugby Reloaded #121 - 50 Years Since the Lions won the Ashes (or, why the Poms Don't Win Anymore) →

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?

You can see the highlights of the 1970 Ashes series here. Phil Clarke and Stephen Owen at Sky Sports also carried a wonderful interview the great Johnny Whiteley about coaching the 1970 Lions - interspersed with random comments by me - on their Golden Point Vodcast.

Rugby Reloaded #120 - Announcing the National Rugby League Museum, with Dr Kevin Moore →

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.

Big thanks to everyone who sent in questions and feel free to send any other questions via Twitter and I’ll attempt to answer them. During the podcast we discussed America’s Professional Football Hall of Fame, which you can find here, and the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, which is is here. Although we didn’t get around to talking about it, Ice hockey’s Hockey Hall of Fame is based in Toronto and also has a very high reputation as one of the world’s leading sports museums. It’s also well worth checking out Twickenham’s World Rugby Museum and Melbourne’s Australian Sports’ Museum.

Rugby Reloaded #119 - The Oval Money Ball, rugby, stats and coaching with Rob Lowe →

The new 'Rugby Reloaded' talks to one of Britain's pioneers in 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. He now runs his own consultancy, Sports Data Experts. We spoke about the origins of stats, the impact they've had on coaching in the rugby codes, where they will go in the future, and much more.

Rugby Reloaded #118 - How to Market Rugby League, with Kacy Mackreth →

This week's episode talks to marketing expert Kacy Mackreth of Leeds Becket University 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 formula turn out?

You can find the article that Kacy and Alex Bond have published about their research here at Managing Sport and Leisure [paywall warning], while they have also outlined their findings on a blogpost here. You can follow Kacy on Twitter here.

Rugby Reloaded #117 - The Crystal Palace Controversy, with Dr Kevin Moore →

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. Fun fact: using the same methodology that Crystal Palace historians use to ‘prove’ they are the oldest professional soccer club, I demonstrate that they are also the world’s oldest rugby league club.

You can follow Kevin Moore on Twitter at @doctorkevinmoo1 and you can visit his website here.

The Guardian’s article on Crystal Palace’s rewriting of history is here and the club’s YouTube video is here. You can buy Peter Manning’s book on the history of the club, Palace at the Palace, from the Crystal Palace Foundation’s website.

For a criticism of Palace’s claims, Clive Nicholson and Mark Metcalf’s extensive critique of Palace’s claims is on their Fred Spiksley website.

I discussed the problems of looking for ‘firsts’ in football - or in history generally - in episode 64 of Rugby Reloaded which was entitled ‘Football Firsts: the last thing we need?’.

Phil Vasili’s book on Arthur Wharton from 1998 that Kevin talks about can be found here. The illustration below is of the England versus Scotland international at the Oval which Kevin mentions as being mistaken for soccer when it is in fact rugby.

England versus Scotland at the Oval, London in 1872. Soccer or rugby? The clue is in the posts under the gasometer on the right of the illustration.

Rugby Reloaded #116 - British Rugby League after Lockdown, with Sean McGuire →

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.

You can find the official announcement of the government’s £16 million loan to the RFL here, and the conservative think tank ‘Onward’ report is here. For my take on ‘Workington Man’ see this piece I wrote for the Guardian.

Rugby Reloaded #115 - All Blacks v Springboks: the struggle for rugby union supremacy in the interwar years →

For 70 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 Hemisphere rugby union today, this is the key.

There’s a Pathe News report of the 1937 Auckland test match here on YouTube. For an overview of New Zealand rugby union’s deep relationship with South Africa, take a look at this article by Trevor Richards.

Rugby Reloaded #114 - Bath v Wigan 1996: When Two Cultures Clash →

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 brightly - the games were not just a clash of the codes, they were also a clash of cultures.

You can see highlights of the league match here and the union match here. Wigan’s win in the intervening Middlesex 7s is here.

Rugby Reloaded #113 - Was Soccer 'Football'? or, 'The Football Historian's Fallacy' →

Is soccer the original form of football that was played in pre-industrial times? But modern soccer looks nothing like the ancient forms of folk football - and for its first few years it was barely distinguishable from rugby. So how did it become the most popular type of football?

This week's episode examines the ‘Football Historian’s Fallacy’; the idea that it was soccer's rules that made it popular. Instead, it argues that the incredible growth of the sport in the last three decades of the nineteenth century was due to factors far more important than than what appeared in the FA’s rulebook.

For further reading, this ‘Rugby Reloaded’ blogpost from 2016 puts the debate into the wider context of the growth of soccer as the global game.

Adrian Harvey’s key book, Football, the First Hundred Years, can be found here.

The recent debate on the origins of Crystal Palace is summarised at the ‘Fred Spiksley’ website here.

Rugby Reloaded #112 - Olsen Filipaina, ' The Big O' with Patrick Skene

This week’s episode talks to Patrick Skene about his new book The Big O: The Life and Times of Olsen Filipaina - Pacific Revolution Pioneer. Olsen was a colossus of New Zealand rugby league in the 1980s and left an indelible impression on those who saw him play - and an even bigger one on those who played against him.

In an era when the number of Pacific Island players in Australian rugby league was tiny, Olsen showed the way for future generations of Polynesian league players (and a number of union players too; he was Jonah Lonu’s idol). But being a pioneer meant that Olsen paid a terrible price in the racism that he faced in the Australian game. Pat’s book looks at Olsen’s life in league and beyond, and explores the huge legacy that ‘The Big O’ left for the sport.

For more details about the book go to http://thebigo.kiwi

You can see Olsen in his pomp in this YouTube showreel.

Rugby Reloaded #111 - Oneida FC: The Short Life and Long Controversy of America's first football club →

This week's episode talks to Dr Kevin Marston about his research into the short history of America's first football club, Oneida FC of Boston, which was formed in 1862 in the midst of the American Civil War. What link did it have to American football and soccer and, perhaps even more intriguingly, how has its story been used by supporters of both codes to legitimise their heritage? It's a dispute that is stil being played out, as controversy reigns about the shape of the ball on the monument to the club on Boston Common.

Kevin’s article on the club, written with Prof Mike Cronin, will be published later this year in Mapping U.S. Soccerscapes, 1863– 1913: Immigrants, Industries, and Individuals, edited by Chris Bolsmann and George Kioussis, which will be published by the University of Tennessee Press later in 2020.

For more information about the Oneida FC, Dr Brian Bunk explores the history of the club in his Soccer History USA podcast here and you can read the 1926 manuscript of WS Scudder’s An Historical Sketch of the Oneida Football Club here.

Rugby Reloaded #110 - Did China Invent Football? With Dr Kevin Moore →

This week's 'Rugby Reloaded' travels back in time to ancient China with Dr Kevin Moore to look at the incredible history of Cuju, the ball game that survived in China for 2,000 years. Was it the forerunner of modern football, as Sepp Blatter once claimed, or was it something far richer and more complex?

You can find details about the Chinese National Football Museum here, Sepp Blatter’s endorsement of Cuju here, and a short description of the game based on what little knowledge currently exists here.

Rugby Reloaded #109 - Rugby's Time Tunnel: The Mitchell & Kenyon films →

This week's 'Rugby Reloaded' goes audio-visual and looks at the Mitchell & Kenyon rugby films of 1901-03. These are the earliest collection of rugby films from almost the dawn of moving pictures, and were filmed just as the Northern Union was mid-way in its evolution from rugby union rules to what became rugby league. And they also show some of the early giants of the sport - Dicky Lockwood, Albert Goldthorpe and James Lomas - in action.

To watch the videos discussed in the podcast, go to this YouTube playlist. You can buy the Edwardian Sports DVD which features the Northern Union films, plus soccer, cricket and athletics direct from the BFI Shop, where you can also buy Professor Vanessa Toulmin’s fascinating book Electric Edwardians about the complete collection of Mitchell & Kenyon films.

For a really deep dive into the matches, here are the line-ups:

Oldham v Swinton (12 January 1901) 5-7 [Match void, replay 3-3]

Oldham: Thomas; Davies (t), S. Lees (g), Fletcher, Huzzey; Lawton, A. Lees; Foster, Wormald, Wilkinson, Telfer, Moffat, Bonsor, Broome, Ellis

Swinton: Chorley; Lewis, Messer (t), R. Valentine (2g), Hampson; Davies, Morgan; Harris, Pomfret, Jones, Preston, J Valentine, Vigors, Berry, Pollit

Hunslet v Leeds (16 February 1901) 16-0

Hunslet: Mitchell; Hannah, W Goldthorpe, Wileman, Smith (2t); Robinson, A Goldthorpe (t, 2g); Ramage, Wilson, Lunn, Brookes, Tunningley, Shooter (t), Glew Baggott

Leeds: Jagger; Chadwick, Coleman, Bentley, Willey; Daltry, Jackson; Crowther, Malins, Hanson, Ross, Horner, Phillips, Taylor, Laycock

Salford v Batley (2 November 1901) 14-6

Salford: Smith; Hayton, Williams (2t), Varty (t), Price; Lomas (t, g), Griffiths; Buckler, Tunney, Rhapps, Heath, Williams, Brown, Shaw, Gledhill

Batley: Wilford; Auty, Fozzard (t), Dai Fitzgerald, Goodall; Davis, Oakland; Spurr (t), Stubley, Clayton, Judge, Phillips, Hollingsworth, Shackleton, Rodgers

Northern Union Challenge Cup Final - Halifax v Salford (25 April 1903 at Headingley) 7-0

Halifax: Little; Wedgwood, Williams, Rigg, Hadwen (2g); Morley, Joe Riley; Jock Riley, Bartle (t), Malinson, Swinbank, Morton, Hammond, Bulmer, Winskill

Salford: Smith; Norris, Nesser, Lomas, Bell; Hartner, Griffiths; Williams, Rhapps, Tunney, Heath, Brown, Buckler, Shaw, Shore

Rugby Reloaded #108 - Life Without League: Diaries during Coronavirus & the importance of history →

This bonus episode of 'Rugby Reloaded' talks about the 'Life Without League: Rugby at the Time of Coronavirus' project with Dr Victoria Dawson. She started the project to encourage people to keep diaries during the extraordinary times we currently live in. We discuss the importance of diaries for historians of the game, how they help us reconstruct the past, how we should look at the history of rugby league, and of course, why you should keep a diary! 

To take part in ‘Life Without League’ go to the website here. If you want to find out more about the ‘Rugby League Women Going To Wembley, 1950-1975’ the project’s Twitter feed is here and you can find its webpage here. You can also find Victoria’s article on the trailblazing 1953 women’s rugby league match in Marsh & Quay in the September 2013 issue of Forty-20 magazine and her article on Hull rugby league pioneer Kay Ibbetson is in the book 13 Inspirations.

Rugby Reloaded #107 - Face to Face with Global Crisis: British Rugby League in WW1 →

This week's episode of ‘Rugby Reloaded’ goes back to August 1914 to explore how rugby league dealt with the global crisis of World War One. Just like today, the game faced pressures to stop playing, underwent unprecedented financial problems, and had to restructure itself.

This is the second of a two part episode that looks at the impact of war on the game - listen to episode 105 for part one.