Posters not from the heartlands: how did you first become interested in rugby league?

[John WP Fan]

I grew up in Toronto and played a little rugby/rugger in high school (I was a hooker). I did not know there were two codes of rugby until a trip to Australia in 2014, when I went to see the Parramatta Eels play the St George Illawarra Dragons. I was confused about what was going on until a local explained it was Rugby League and went over some of the rules.

in 2015 I attended the final day of the Rugby Sevens competition at the Pan Am Games at BMO Field and  loved it. When I heard Toronto was getting a professional Rugby League team I bought a pair of season tickets without any idea of who would go with me to the games. I managed to drag some friends along that season but also attended a few games on my own. Now in our third season I have not missed a home game, and managed to get over to the UK last year for both Magic Weekend and the Summer Bash.

Footnote: one of the players I saw play at that game in 2014 was Fui Fui Moi Moi, who wound up with the Wolfpack in their first season!

I'll still watch some Union but I find the flow and pace of RL much more exciting. I still love the Sevens, and I really enjoyed the Nines Tournament I saw at Lamport Stadium in May. Now I sponsor one of the Wolfpack  players and continue to drag friends into my obsession. Looking forward to earning our way into Super League!

[Bearman]

29 minutes ago, John WP Fan said:

I grew up in Toronto and played a little rugby/rugger in high school (I was a hooker). I did not know there were two codes of rugby until a trip to Australia in 2014, when I went to see the Parramatta Eels play the St George Illawarra Dragons. I was confused about what was going on until a local explained it was Rugby League and went over some of the rules.

in 2015 I attended the final day of the Rugby Sevens competition at the Pan Am Games at BMO Field and  loved it. When I heard Toronto was getting a professional Rugby League team I bought a pair of season tickets without any idea of who would go with me to the games. I managed to drag some friends along that season but also attended a few games on my own. Now in our third season I have not missed a home game, and managed to get over to the UK last year for both Magic Weekend and the Summer Bash.

Footnote: one of the players I saw play at that game in 2014 was Fui Fui Moi Moi, who wound up with the Wolfpack in their first season!

I'll still watch some Union but I find the flow and pace of RL much more exciting. I still love the Sevens, and I really enjoyed the Nines Tournament I saw at Lamport Stadium in May. Now I sponsor one of the Wolfpack  players and continue to drag friends into my obsession. Looking forward to earning our way into Super League!

It's people like you that get my goat. Haven't you heard that you are not wanted?

Coming on here and telling us you like OUR game.

I see you have been watching the game for 5 years, all and good but in that 5 years how many players of SOO quality have you actually developed?.

Where will it all end? Please, Please Please  stop telling your mates about this or else the game could be popular. That's the last thing we need.

(Fabulous thread and COYWP)

[deluded pom?]

4 hours ago, Black Country Wire said:

Stumbled on a Challenge Cup final one year. May have been 1980.

Hadn't a clue what was going on but was enjoying it so made a point of watching every year.

Then around the early 1990s some mates from the football started going to watch Featherstone Rovers (can't recall why - not a natural team to follow from Stourbridge but there you are).

So in 1991 or 1992 attended my first live game - Warrington v Featherstone at Wilderspool - and the rest is history.

Been a Wire fan ever since and a season ticket holder for 20 years!

 

I hope it wasn't 1980. A poor game even taking the result into account.

[Yosser]

On 18/06/2019 at 14:18, fighting irish said:

Great stories.

I was attracted to the game because of boredom and a sense of the absurdity, I witnessed on the rugby union field. I had played ten years of rugby union and during my first year of rugby league, I scored more points, kicked more goals, made more tackles and carried the ball more yards than in the previous ten years of Ra ra.

In order to carry on playing after university, I had to start a team in my home town. With our nearest opposition, two hundred miles away, we created a fixture list of ''friendlies'' with visiting clubs from ''up north''.

I remember, I'd booked a permit to play on the local authority park field and they telephoned me to say I couldn't have the field because a local RU club took priority! I asked ''on what basis''. The head of department was involved with the local first class union club. He told me that I shouldn't be doing it. I asked why and he said, ''its against the rules''. ''Whose rules?'' ''The WRU'' says he. I said, ''I know its against the rules, but why is it against the rules?'''. He didn't have an answer. I told him, I had the permit, it was a legal contract and that as a local authority employee, he worked for me and didn't ''own'' the field. We played on.

They decried our ''professional'' players for being paid, but my father, had played for Aberavon RU club before the war and told me of a large crowd at one game, which prompted the ''amateur'' players to refuse to come out of the changing rooms until they were promised a bigger share of the gate-take, than normal! 

I organised a seven a side tournament (which was well attended) and we received a letter from the then secretary of the WRU, Denis Evans saying that if we went ahead, every player in the tournament would be ''professionalised'' and banned from Rugby Union! ''Why?'' Because we called the trophy the Jonathan Davies Cup. Ha ha ha. We created as much publicity as we could from that arrogant schoolboy error.

BARLA advised us not to upset them. I said ''listen Maurice, (Oldroyd) their against us, no matter what they say to our faces, stop wasting time currying favour with them.''

They had succeeded in creating such a cultural bias, such an underlying fear of fraternising with us that I was once asked by a parent of a 10 year old boy if he would be banned by the RU if he played ''Little league'' with our school team. I replied, ''you'd have to take it up with them, but tell me, would you want to support an organisation that would do that to your child?'' His little lad played on.

I loved playing rugby league, more than anything I've ever done, but I was also drawn into the moral and ethical fight against these sickening hypocritical tyrants, spreading their poison about our honest professional sportsmen and our great game.

When I was a child, my father said ''Son, if you see a GOOD fight, be sure and get in it''. I'm still in it.

 

Outstanding post.  So good I have pasted and saved it !

[NERugbyDad]

I'm pretty new to Rugby League after being drawn in to it by my eldest son.

Coming from North Tyneside and in particular Whitley Bay, football and Ice Hockey have always been my main sports but I've always watched sport in general. I got a season ticket for Newcastle United for my 8th birthday and was hooked until Ice Hockey took the number one spot in the late eighties early nineties, this was when games where on Grandstand on a Saturday afternoon and the Whitley Warriors vs Durham Wasps derby matches were just amazing with 3,500 packed in to the corrugated iron shed that is the Ice Rink . I then played Ice-Hockey through until my eldest son was born in 2005.

Over my life I had watched the odd rugby league game on the beeb and Sky and had enjoyed them but never really got in to it enough to watch other than in passing as time was taken up with other things. That was until a year past September when my eldest started high school and started to play. Through his first term at high school they had a Newcastle Thunder community coach coming in each week and he loved it and was soon playing in school festivals at Kingston Park. By January last year he wanted to start playing for a team outside of school and started to watch Super League games on Sky and this is when I got pulled in. Come May last year we had tickets for Magic Weekend for our first live games and he was playing in a schools festival at St James in the day leading up to it. Both now well and truly hooked. 

Since then we've started to attend Thunder games when we can and his younger brother has joined in the fun, playing and watching as well. My dyed in the wool football fan father in law has even been drawn in to watching as well. My Son is definitely a poster boy for the benefits of community coaching and the Sky Try programmes, he was up for NE u12 player of the year after less than a year of playing the game and the coaching he received has resulted in 2 new players and 4 new watchers (5 if you include forcing it upon the wife) of rugby league just in our family.

[Black Country Wire]

10 hours ago, Damien said:

I was going to call your a glory hunter but then remembered Warrington haven't actually won the league for 65 years haha.

18 years between my first game in 1991 and the Challenge Cup win in 2009.

So no, hardly glory hunting!!

[mightyship]

15 hours ago, Black Country Wire said:

Stumbled on a Challenge Cup final one year. May have been 1980.

Hadn't a clue what was going on but was enjoying it so made a point of watching every year.

Then around the early 1990s some mates from the football started going to watch Featherstone Rovers (can't recall why - not a natural team to follow from Stourbridge but there you are).

So in 1991 or 1992 attended my first live game - Warrington v Featherstone at Wilderspool - and the rest is history.

Been a Wire fan ever since and a season ticket holder for 20 years!

 

That’s weird - I grew up in Stourbridge in the 70’s and as a kid sort of supported Fev (my dad was from Pontefract) but my first sport was football and Liverpool in particular. But if RL was on the tele we watched and occasionally it would be “my team” Fev.

Dads job took us to live in Kendal in the early 80’s and in 1983 he took me to my first live RL game. Craven Park for Barrow vs Fev. Fev lost 5-0 but I loved it and changed my allegiance from Kenny Dalglish to Terry Hudson very quickly.

Dads job took us back to Yorkshire a couple of years later and that meant more regular visits to post office road and I was well and truly hooked.

still go to watch Fev - home and away - with my dad now . And recently introduced my son in law to the game and see the same love of the game and rovers developing in him that I had 35 odd years ago

 

[EssexRL]

This is a great thread. We all seemed to have found RL - if we are a bit older often via BBC - rather than RL found us (via marketing). 

[Ackroman]

34 minutes ago, EssexRL said:

This is a great thread. We all seemed to have found RL - if we are a bit older often via BBC - rather than RL found us (via marketing). 

Just shows the value of the challenge cup as a marketing tool.

[RP London]

born in sheffield in the late 70s so assume i count.. went away to school at Malvern so very RU centric. 

Played Union growing up but my grandparents on my mums side were from Warrington and used to go to Wilderspool every weekend before moving over to Sheffield in the late 1940s early 1950s. 

Used to watch the ashes tests, internationals and cup matches on BBC when they were on and used to love it, then go and "play league" in the garden. 

Growing up always felt it was more my sport but with no ability to play. 

Went to Birmingham Uni in 1997 and they were setting up a league team so went along to try out (also had been playing Union at Uni) and loved it so gave up union and never really looked back. Then ended up at South London Storm meeting Number 16 and a fair few others in the early 2000s to carry on playing post Uni. 

[RP London]

On 18/06/2019 at 14:18, fighting irish said:

Great stories.

I was attracted to the game because of boredom and a sense of the absurdity, I witnessed on the rugby union field. I had played ten years of rugby union and during my first year of rugby league, I scored more points, kicked more goals, made more tackles and carried the ball more yards than in the previous ten years of Ra ra.

In order to carry on playing after university, I had to start a team in my home town. With our nearest opposition, two hundred miles away, we created a fixture list of ''friendlies'' with visiting clubs from ''up north''.

I remember, I'd booked a permit to play on the local authority park field and they telephoned me to say I couldn't have the field because a local RU club took priority! I asked ''on what basis''. The head of department was involved with the local first class union club. He told me that I shouldn't be doing it. I asked why and he said, ''its against the rules''. ''Whose rules?'' ''The WRU'' says he. I said, ''I know its against the rules, but why is it against the rules?'''. He didn't have an answer. I told him, I had the permit, it was a legal contract and that as a local authority employee, he worked for me and didn't ''own'' the field. We played on.

They decried our ''professional'' players for being paid, but my father, had played for Aberavon RU club before the war and told me of a large crowd at one game, which prompted the ''amateur'' players to refuse to come out of the changing rooms until they were promised a bigger share of the gate-take, than normal! 

I organised a seven a side tournament (which was well attended) and we received a letter from the then secretary of the WRU, Denis Evans saying that if we went ahead, every player in the tournament would be ''professionalised'' and banned from Rugby Union! ''Why?'' Because we called the trophy the Jonathan Davies Cup. Ha ha ha. We created as much publicity as we could from that arrogant schoolboy error.

BARLA advised us not to upset them. I said ''listen Maurice, (Oldroyd) their against us, no matter what they say to our faces, stop wasting time currying favour with them.''

They had succeeded in creating such a cultural bias, such an underlying fear of fraternising with us that I was once asked by a parent of a 10 year old boy if he would be banned by the RU if he played ''Little league'' with our school team. I replied, ''you'd have to take it up with them, but tell me, would you want to support an organisation that would do that to your child?'' His little lad played on.

I loved playing rugby league, more than anything I've ever done, but I was also drawn into the moral and ethical fight against these sickening hypocritical tyrants, spreading their poison about our honest professional sportsmen and our great game.

When I was a child, my father said ''Son, if you see a GOOD fight, be sure and get in it''. I'm still in it.

 

Think i may have played against you in 2003 ish.. had an RLC cup match for South London Storm again Aberavon (1/4 final i think)... was hurling it down when we arrived.. and you were watering the pitch!!! it was a muddy game, good game though! we won which helped.

[Hughsehhh]

A girlfriend from Leeds and her rhinos supporting family. 

Growing up in Wrexham, it's only really football, even RU doesn't get much of a look in. I was away at uni when the crusaders were in superleague, so missed that. Met the gf in London a few years ago and to get on with her dad and family, sat through a few games of RL on the tv. Once the initial prejudices and northern jokes were put aside, I was absolutely hooked and have been consuming as much RL as I can since. 

So much so that I joined a local rl club down south at the ripe age of 30, having never played any form of rugby in my life prior.

The rlwc 2017 was also massive for me, absolutely loved it

[fighting irish]

16 minutes ago, RP London said:

Think i may have played against you in 2003 ish.. had an RLC cup match for South London Storm again Aberavon (1/4 final i think)... was hurling it down when we arrived.. and you were watering the pitch!!! it was a muddy game, good game though! we won which helped.

Someone else made a comment about us watering the pitch in the rain too (unless it was you?). Ha ha. That's why the rates are so high in this neck of the woods. Anyway, its great to hear from you. Are you still connected to a club up there? 

[SSoutherner]

when i was young (70's) i didnt realise there was a difference and just enjoyed watching both codes on the TV - played RU at secondary school and realised League looked a far faster game and def then (in 80's) the fitness levels were poles apart.

Watched both on TV throughout 90's early 00's when i didnt play at all

Children started playing RU in mid 00's and i got drawn into pad holding and via that into vets games then 4th XV games - have team mates who play league in summer and enjoy watching it as a different sport - like RU 7's. Have never played it other than the odd muck around or as part of pre season RU fitness training as just not fit enough

[RP London]

4 minutes ago, fighting irish said:

Someone else made a comment about us watering the pitch in the rain too (unless it was you?). Ha ha. That's why the rates are so high in this neck of the woods. Anyway, its great to hear from you. Are you still connected to a club up there? 

sadly not. I played a bit at Hillsborough Hawks but then family commitments, work and age got in the way. Now Coaching at Sheffield Tigers Rugby Union with the Under 11s as my son plays there. He is enjoying playing with his mates so hence union rather than going over to league but as he grows up i'm hoping he gives it a go. He loves watching it and going to the games more so than union and the way they play at under 11s isnt far off league anyway, and from what he is saying the bits he is enjoying is more league than union so think he will, then i'll get back involved i think. The union club dont mind a few league minded individuals getting involved, i'm not the only one!

Try to get to as many Eagles games as possible and head to other matches too (we're off the semi at Bolton and the cup final [his first])

[damp squib]

On 18/06/2019 at 12:35, damp squib said:

I'm from a part of Ireland where Rugby of any code was pretty much non-existent, at least when I was growing up. I got into Rugby Union in University mainly to fit in but I was always a bit frustrated by the archaic rules, private school/old boy's network and the fact that it was the sport of choice of the absolute worst people in the country who pushed it to a position of undeserved prominence in the media.

Then one day a few years ago I happened to stumble upon a Challenge Cup game on BBC NI between Bradford and Warrington being played on a weird pitch that sloped up at the corners. Once I read about the history of the game as a working class rebellion I was hooked.

I'll add a little anecdote on to this. As is typical of new converts, for a while I became evangelical about spreading the game and started waxing lyrical to my Dad about this strange new sport I was sure he'd never heard of.

To my surprise he was very familiar with it as when he was a teenager in the 60s/70s working in the family pub, an local ould lad who had worked as a labourer in Lancashire after the war used to come in and bore the ear off him every evening going on and on about "The Greatest Game". Sometimes when I think I have it tough trying to sell the game here I think about that ould fella back in the 60s in a town where even soccer was a strange, heathen sport.

[dkw]

On 18/06/2019 at 14:18, fighting irish said:

Great stories.

I was attracted to the game because of boredom and a sense of the absurdity, I witnessed on the rugby union field. I had played ten years of rugby union and during my first year of rugby league, I scored more points, kicked more goals, made more tackles and carried the ball more yards than in the previous ten years of Ra ra.

In order to carry on playing after university, I had to start a team in my home town. With our nearest opposition, two hundred miles away, we created a fixture list of ''friendlies'' with visiting clubs from ''up north''.

I remember, I'd booked a permit to play on the local authority park field and they telephoned me to say I couldn't have the field because a local RU club took priority! I asked ''on what basis''. The head of department was involved with the local first class union club. He told me that I shouldn't be doing it. I asked why and he said, ''its against the rules''. ''Whose rules?'' ''The WRU'' says he. I said, ''I know its against the rules, but why is it against the rules?'''. He didn't have an answer. I told him, I had the permit, it was a legal contract and that as a local authority employee, he worked for me and didn't ''own'' the field. We played on.

They decried our ''professional'' players for being paid, but my father, had played for Aberavon RU club before the war and told me of a large crowd at one game, which prompted the ''amateur'' players to refuse to come out of the changing rooms until they were promised a bigger share of the gate-take, than normal! 

I organised a seven a side tournament (which was well attended) and we received a letter from the then secretary of the WRU, Denis Evans saying that if we went ahead, every player in the tournament would be ''professionalised'' and banned from Rugby Union! ''Why?'' Because we called the trophy the Jonathan Davies Cup. Ha ha ha. We created as much publicity as we could from that arrogant schoolboy error.

BARLA advised us not to upset them. I said ''listen Maurice, (Oldroyd) their against us, no matter what they say to our faces, stop wasting time currying favour with them.''

They had succeeded in creating such a cultural bias, such an underlying fear of fraternising with us that I was once asked by a parent of a 10 year old boy if he would be banned by the RU if he played ''Little league'' with our school team. I replied, ''you'd have to take it up with them, but tell me, would you want to support an organisation that would do that to your child?'' His little lad played on.

I loved playing rugby league, more than anything I've ever done, but I was also drawn into the moral and ethical fight against these sickening hypocritical tyrants, spreading their poison about our honest professional sportsmen and our great game.

When I was a child, my father said ''Son, if you see a GOOD fight, be sure and get in it''. I'm still in it.

 

Quite possibly my favourite ever post on this here forum, bloody great to read all that.

[JDINTHEHIZZOUSE]

On 18/06/2019 at 14:18, fighting irish said:

Great stories.

I was attracted to the game because of boredom and a sense of the absurdity, I witnessed on the rugby union field. I had played ten years of rugby union and during my first year of rugby league, I scored more points, kicked more goals, made more tackles and carried the ball more yards than in the previous ten years of Ra ra.

In order to carry on playing after university, I had to start a team in my home town. With our nearest opposition, two hundred miles away, we created a fixture list of ''friendlies'' with visiting clubs from ''up north''.

I remember, I'd booked a permit to play on the local authority park field and they telephoned me to say I couldn't have the field because a local RU club took priority! I asked ''on what basis''. The head of department was involved with the local first class union club. He told me that I shouldn't be doing it. I asked why and he said, ''its against the rules''. ''Whose rules?'' ''The WRU'' says he. I said, ''I know its against the rules, but why is it against the rules?'''. He didn't have an answer. I told him, I had the permit, it was a legal contract and that as a local authority employee, he worked for me and didn't ''own'' the field. We played on.

They decried our ''professional'' players for being paid, but my father, had played for Aberavon RU club before the war and told me of a large crowd at one game, which prompted the ''amateur'' players to refuse to come out of the changing rooms until they were promised a bigger share of the gate-take, than normal! 

I organised a seven a side tournament (which was well attended) and we received a letter from the then secretary of the WRU, Denis Evans saying that if we went ahead, every player in the tournament would be ''professionalised'' and banned from Rugby Union! ''Why?'' Because we called the trophy the Jonathan Davies Cup. Ha ha ha. We created as much publicity as we could from that arrogant schoolboy error.

BARLA advised us not to upset them. I said ''listen Maurice, (Oldroyd) their against us, no matter what they say to our faces, stop wasting time currying favour with them.''

They had succeeded in creating such a cultural bias, such an underlying fear of fraternising with us that I was once asked by a parent of a 10 year old boy if he would be banned by the RU if he played ''Little league'' with our school team. I replied, ''you'd have to take it up with them, but tell me, would you want to support an organisation that would do that to your child?'' His little lad played on.

I loved playing rugby league, more than anything I've ever done, but I was also drawn into the moral and ethical fight against these sickening hypocritical tyrants, spreading their poison about our honest professional sportsmen and our great game.

When I was a child, my father said ''Son, if you see a GOOD fight, be sure and get in it''. I'm still in it.

 

I think im in love with you!!!xxx

[fighting irish]

28 minutes ago, JDINTHEHIZZOUSE said:

I think im in love with you!!!xxx

You daft boooger! 

[Kayakman]

2 minutes ago, fighting irish said:

You daft boooger! 

Don't spurn him so quickly...he has alot to offer.

[fighting irish]

Just now, Kayakman said:

Don't spurn him so quickly...he has alot to offer.

I didn't intend to spurn, I hope its not been seen that way. I was just leg pulling.

I'm not really that judgemental about anyone on here, even those that disagree vehemently with my ideas.

I just think we're all in this together and should look out for each other (not argue so much) and remember we're on the same side.

Let's direct our energies towards winning.  The fight's out there, not in here.

[Kayakman]

2 minutes ago, fighting irish said:

I didn't intend to spurn, I hope its not been seen that way. I was just leg pulling.

I'm not really that judgemental about anyone on here, even those that disagree vehemently with my ideas.

I just think we're all in this together and should look out for each other (not argue so much) and remember we're on the same side.

Let's direct our energies towards winning.  The fight's out there, not in here.

Well, with an attitude like that I think you should drop JD and introduce yourself to a poster named 'Parky'.

[Goughy]

From Doncaster which I would consider outside the RL heartlands. Anyway, my story

Grew up in the Yorkshire cricket system of which there are parallel streams. One is Yorkshire schools, the other is with Yorkshire County Cricket Club. The differences were stark. The schools cricket was run buy Public/Private school people who were also Union people.  They were awful people who were, quite frankly ######.  Even small things like making state school kids room together as we would be more comfortable with "our own"! YCCC was based at Headingley and was run by proper Northern working class cricket pros.  How I was treated was completely different.  One was about networks and contacts the other was far more about talent (though of course I am not naive to think that contacts didnt also play some role for some.)  I was always the outsider in the schools system but the pro system was inclusive.  Rugby League is both the outsider sport and inclusive and I gravitated to it, partly due to the Headingely link, for cultural identity and becuase the people who ran Union were terrible people (by which time I had met numerous.)  To continue my cricket at Yorkshire I went to University in Leeds. Decided I wanted to play League.  Made the First XIII as fullback and was at the Academy and A team of decentish pro League team. Ended up working for the Rhinos at Headingley during my student years and that completed the courtship.

Essentially I fell in love with the sport as I identified with its cultural importance, its inclusivity, and challenge to the establishment combined with a reaction to differentiate and seperate myself from the public/private school network that had no idea what real sport or integrity was.

Hope that makes sense.  May come across as that I had a chip on my shoulder but I hope it doesnt.  I fell in love with what the sport represented and how it sat as a counterweight to everything wrong with the old school ties establishment.

[deluded pom?]

14 hours ago, Goughy said:

From Doncaster which I would consider outside the RL heartlands. Anyway, my story

Grew up in the Yorkshire cricket system of which there are parallel streams. One is Yorkshire schools, the other is with Yorkshire County Cricket Club. The differences were stark. The schools cricket was run buy Public/Private school people who were also Union people.  They were awful people who were, quite frankly ######.  Even small things like making state school kids room together as we would be more comfortable with "our own"! YCCC was based at Headingley and was run by proper Northern working class cricket pros.  How I was treated was completely different.  One was about networks and contacts the other was far more about talent (though of course I am not naive to think that contacts didnt also play some role for some.)  I was always the outsider in the schools system but the pro system was inclusive.  Rugby League is both the outsider sport and inclusive and I gravitated to it, partly due to the Headingely link, for cultural identity and becuase the people who ran Union were terrible people (by which time I had met numerous.)  To continue my cricket at Yorkshire I went to University in Leeds. Decided I wanted to play League.  Made the First XIII as fullback and was at the Academy and A team of decentish pro League team. Ended up working for the Rhinos at Headingley during my student years and that completed the courtship.

Essentially I fell in love with the sport as I identified with its cultural importance, its inclusivity, and challenge to the establishment combined with a reaction to differentiate and seperate myself from the public/private school network that had no idea what real sport or integrity was.

Hope that makes sense.  May come across as that I had a chip on my shoulder but I hope it doesnt.  I fell in love with what the sport represented and how it sat as a counterweight to everything wrong with the old school ties establishment.

You are Darren Gough and I claim my free Yorkshire terrier.

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

Born and bred in Hemel......I'm a heartlander!!