Hope and Glory: Rugby League in Thatcher's Britain

[Man of Kent]

18 minutes ago, Tides Of History said:

Thanks Man of Kent - glad you are enjoying it!!

The book is available now - and able to order online or to your local store 

Here is a little promo of the book for anyone who has not seen yet - filmed on location in gloriously sunny Featherstone...

https://twitter.com/labour_history/status/1691381597298139137?s=20

Will be getting out and about to lots of clubs - feel free to DM me for any appearances or more information on it!!

Finished it in a few days, Anthony. It's a highly readable book.

Not to make a political point, but to me the story here is rugby league modernised during the Thatcher years just as much (if not more) as other aspects of British life.  

No doubt it will make many fans wistful for the 1988-1994 GB vs Kangaroos days. 

[OnStrike]

Payday tomorrow so will be picking up a copy, can't wait to read it

[Tides Of History]

On 21/08/2023 at 10:39, Man of Kent said:

Finished it in a few days, Anthony. It's a highly readable book.

Not to make a political point, but to me the story here is rugby league modernised during the Thatcher years just as much (if not more) as other aspects of British life.  

No doubt it will make many fans wistful for the 1988-1994 GB vs Kangaroos days. 

Thanks MOK.

Kangaroo tours were critically important. Its hard to imagine what the story would have looked like if we didn't have that rivalry which we have subsequently lost. Here is a piece - expanded for Forty 20 this month - which outlines some of my motivations for looking at this era:

Back to the Future?

How the 1980s made modern rugby league. 

It was the Spring of 1996 and the RFL Chief Executive Maurice Lindsay was in a combative mood. Still reeling from the civil war that was prompted by his proposal to merge clubs together, Lindsay was adamant that the new competition would change the trajectory of the game: “Super League will represent a dramatic sea change in approach, a quantum leap in thinking. Life is changing. We have to change with it. You can’t stop history developing”.

At the centre of the Super League vision was the idea that rugby league was going to expand beyond its traditional areas. “We are moving toward a city/large town league”, Lindsay declared, with Newcastle, Bristol, the Midlands, and London viewed as essential areas for growth.

Almost thirty years have passed since we switched from winter to summer and the dreams of league becoming a truly national game have all but diminished. Since the financial crash of 2008, the aim of the sport has been survival in the face of declining television deals and sponsorship interest.  

The arrival of IMG to ‘reimagine’ the sport for the next century is an acknowledgement that we have fallen way behind our competitors in football, cricket, darts, and rugby union in attracting commercial revenue.

In many ways the arrival of Super League was the ‘reimagining’ of the game for the 21^st century. For many years people had sat around pubs and clubs of the north and debated what would happen if rugby league had the resources, television coverage and media profile that it had always desired. Super League was to be the platform to finally turn dreams into reality.  

Although the initial announcement of Super League in 1995 was a swift one, arranged hastily in a crazy 24 hours that is impinged on the memory of any journalist that covered it, the journey to that moment began fifteen years earlier.

The 1970s had been a tough period for the game. From declining attendances to tabloid campaigns to have its “violence” banned from television, even glamour club Wigan were on life support. And when the Australian Kangaroos humiliated Great Britain on the 1982 Invincible tour, the game was at the point of no return.

What happened to the game in the 1980s and early 90s is the central question I seek to address in my new book Hope and Glory: Rugby League in Thatcher’s Britain which will be published this August.

In the popular imagination of the country, the 1980s have been mythologised as the decade when everything went wrong for rugby league towns. The traditional working class - of the mines, factories, and cotton mills - were the hapless victims of Thatcherite economic policies.

But while people are naturally drawn to the hardship, the story of rugby league shows there is a richer, more nuanced, and complex story to tell.

It was a period of change that was more dramatic and eventful than anything that has come before or since. Watching a game from 1980 and another from 1995 is like watching two sports from different planets. Central to that was the rise of the professional ‘celebrity’ player and the speed at which the game changed.

This was the era of bold expansion into new areas such as London and Sheffield, as well as Kent, Carlisle, and Nottingham. But it was also about the resilience and revival of traditional teams such as Featherstone, Widnes and Keighley. Innovation was found in some of the most unlikely places. Long before Netflix’s Sunderland till I Die came along, for example, unfashionable clubs like Doncaster opened their changing rooms to filmmakers to shoot award-winning documentaries.

In an age before social media, people such as Harry Edgar developed Open Rugby to give players, writers, and administrators the space to engage in the battle for ideas. Out of those debates came the physical reshaping of rugby league's image, from how the pundits talked about it and how the cameras filmed it, to how the advertising agencies made posters about it.

Hope and Glory reminds us that nothing is set in stone. The book is about an attitude and a philosophy that rugby league should not be constrained by the limits that outsiders and institutionalised ways of thinking places upon it.

As IMG hope to ‘reimagine’ the game for the next century, the future of Super League remains uncertain. By going back to the very beginning of this story, we can begin to understand what it was all really about. 

 

 

[DG70]

I vaguely remember the hype about Fulham back then, fair play that the club has kept going now under the name of the London Broncos, terrific era for Rugby League, Ron Marler on sunday night reading the day's results on the radio, and the great Alex Murphy still cutting his teeth as a coach.

[OnStrike]

Just finished this @Tides Of History and really enjoyed it. 

Having just put it down, my initial thought on finishing it is to wonder why (through the whole period covered in the book probably up till now) powerful people in the game seem to think there is something inherently 'wrong' about the game being (or being seen as) a primarily northern, working class sport. They are so desperate to shed the image of 'northerness' and/or working class culture that they don't realise that without that, you're left with one sport among many. Surely the uniqueness of its history and tradition should be a selling point, not a reason to be embarrassed? I write that as a Londoner with no real connection to north family wise or whatever. Especially with the mergers at the end, when people didn't want them, the 'modernisers' just assume people haven't listened properly or are too thick to actually understand what they really want.

Anyway, great book and congratulations on it and all the best.

[The Masked Poster]

20 hours ago, OnStrike said:

Just finished this @Tides Of History and really enjoyed it. 

Having just put it down, my initial thought on finishing it is to wonder why (through the whole period covered in the book probably up till now) powerful people in the game seem to think there is something inherently 'wrong' about the game being (or being seen as) a primarily northern, working class sport. They are so desperate to shed the image of 'northerness' and/or working class culture that they don't realise that without that, you're left with one sport among many. Surely the uniqueness of its history and tradition should be a selling point, not a reason to be embarrassed? I write that as a Londoner with no real connection to north family wise or whatever. Especially with the mergers at the end, when people didn't want them, the 'modernisers' just assume people haven't listened properly or are too thick to actually understand what they really want.

Anyway, great book and congratulations on it and all the best.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being northern and working class - I’m both. But then so was Coronation Street and The Beatles and they didn’t let it constrain themselves to a limited area of the country, they are loved nationally and in the case of The Beatles, globally.
 

Too many people in RL revel in the niche aspect of it and are either convinced “outsiders aren’t interested” or are downright hostile towards anyone not steeped in RL. I don’t think the issue will ever be resolved but it wouldn’t be as important if RL was genuinely popular across the north, but unfortunately it’s not. 

[OnStrike]

4 hours ago, The Masked Poster said:

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being northern and working class - I’m both. But then so was Coronation Street and The Beatles and they didn’t let it constrain themselves to a limited area of the country, they are loved nationally and in the case of The Beatles, globally.
 

Too many people in RL revel in the niche aspect of it and are either convinced “outsiders aren’t interested” or are downright hostile towards anyone not steeped in RL. I don’t think the issue will ever be resolved but it wouldn’t be as important if RL was genuinely popular across the north, but unfortunately it’s not. 

Yeah agree and I definitely wasn't talking about retreating into some kind of caricature and excluding people who don't fit that. The examples of northern working class musicians, bands, actors, TV programmes, films, sports men/women, presenters etc that are hugely popular nationally due in part to their northern working class roots are legion

[Tides Of History]

On 02/09/2023 at 12:43, OnStrike said:

Just finished this @Tides Of History and really enjoyed it. 

Having just put it down, my initial thought on finishing it is to wonder why (through the whole period covered in the book probably up till now) powerful people in the game seem to think there is something inherently 'wrong' about the game being (or being seen as) a primarily northern, working class sport. They are so desperate to shed the image of 'northerness' and/or working class culture that they don't realise that without that, you're left with one sport among many. Surely the uniqueness of its history and tradition should be a selling point, not a reason to be embarrassed? I write that as a Londoner with no real connection to north family wise or whatever. Especially with the mergers at the end, when people didn't want them, the 'modernisers' just assume people haven't listened properly or are too thick to actually understand what they really want.

Anyway, great book and congratulations on it and all the best.

Thanks for the kind words - it is much appreciated and glad so many people agree that this really was a fascinating era for the game

I think administrators in the 1980s were desperate to move away from the negative image the game had - the sport of Eddie Waring, the wippets and flat caps and the idea that players weren't athletes as many assumed at the time.

They wanted to project an image of the game that was modern and dynamic, hence why figures such as Ellery Hanley and Martin Offiah became the central planks of the new image.

The desire to expand to the south came through the commercial opportunities it would have provided and media exposure - and the fact that the game had never really tried to expand in the south. Today I don't think there is anyone in the game who believes that we can cut through in the south - 40 years of trying and we are in a weaker position that we were in the first season that Fulham played.

The optimism that league can become a national game has diminished - and perhaps there is a realisation too that just taking the product alone to a new area is not enough to bring new people on board. In the 1980s there was a genuine belief that all we had to do was spread the word wide enough and people would come on board. 

[ATLANTISMAN]

57 minutes ago, Tides Of History said:

Thanks for the kind words - it is much appreciated and glad so many people agree that this really was a fascinating era for the game

I think administrators in the 1980s were desperate to move away from the negative image the game had - the sport of Eddie Waring, the wippets and flat caps and the idea that players weren't athletes as many assumed at the time.

They wanted to project an image of the game that was modern and dynamic, hence why figures such as Ellery Hanley and Martin Offiah became the central planks of the new image.

The desire to expand to the south came through the commercial opportunities it would have provided and media exposure - and the fact that the game had never really tried to expand in the south. Today I don't think there is anyone in the game who believes that we can cut through in the south - 40 years of trying and we are in a weaker position that we were in the first season that Fulham played.

The optimism that league can become a national game has diminished - and perhaps there is a realisation too that just taking the product alone to a new area is not enough to bring new people on board. In the 1980s there was a genuine belief that all we had to do was spread the word wide enough and people would come on board. 

Having been at the coalface TOH (Excuse the pun) my personal feeling now is that the best way to take the game forward is for the England brand to spread the word whilst giving the traditional clubs 100% support, the one area outside of the heartlands that i would also count as important is London and in a funny way i also see Cornwall as having huge potential.

 

Same goes for France the previous president (Lovely man Luc) had a dream of a French super league in big cities this was never going to work best way forward is to give 100% to traditional teams and areas where the game was once strong but could bounce back again then use the national team to spread the word.

 

The major difference between now and 40 years ago is that now (Outside of taking over a contract) there are NO transfer fees so investment into a new club is minimal transfers fees were a killer.

Cornwall has a real chance 40 years ago they would have ended up the same way as Carlisle/Kent/Nottingham/Scarborough/Mansfield etc.

Interesting that Gravesend Kent has seen some of  the best Broncos home crowds over the last 2 seasons working class Kent white van man loves non league football and rugby league:)

 

P 

 

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by ATLANTISMAN

[The Masked Poster]

1 hour ago, Tides Of History said:

Thanks for the kind words - it is much appreciated and glad so many people agree that this really was a fascinating era for the game

I think administrators in the 1980s were desperate to move away from the negative image the game had - the sport of Eddie Waring, the wippets and flat caps and the idea that players weren't athletes as many assumed at the time.

They wanted to project an image of the game that was modern and dynamic, hence why figures such as Ellery Hanley and Martin Offiah became the central planks of the new image.

The desire to expand to the south came through the commercial opportunities it would have provided and media exposure - and the fact that the game had never really tried to expand in the south. Today I don't think there is anyone in the game who believes that we can cut through in the south - 40 years of trying and we are in a weaker position that we were in the first season that Fulham played.

The optimism that league can become a national game has diminished - and perhaps there is a realisation too that just taking the product alone to a new area is not enough to bring new people on board. In the 1980s there was a genuine belief that all we had to do was spread the word wide enough and people would come on board. 

Apart from having Fulham, what did the game do in the 80's and early 90's to show it was making a genuine attempt to grow the game in the south? 

NB I don't include the setting up if clubs for one or two seasons then doing a bunk as proper attempts at genuine growth. 

[LeeF]

And now on the William Hill Sports Book of the year longlist which is a great achievement  

 

[Tides Of History]

On 28/09/2023 at 14:05, LeeF said:

And now on the William Hill Sports Book of the year longlist which is a great achievement  

 

Thanks mate - Delighted to make the long list.

No RL book has ever won the award so obviously it would be great if it does but its a pretty strong field this year. As ever my thanks go to people like @marklaspalmasand @John Drakefor their insights when i was researching and writing on here!!

It is now in the hands of a six person panel - BUT...you can vote for it to be the best cover of the year.

If people wish to I would really appreciate their support - voting via the link below

https://news.williamhill.com/judge-a-book-by-its-cover/

 

 

[idrewthehaggis]

On 22/08/2023 at 12:44, Tides Of History said:

Thanks MOK.

Kangaroo tours were critically important. Its hard to imagine what the story would have looked like if we didn't have that rivalry which we have subsequently lost. Here is a piece - expanded for Forty 20 this month - which outlines some of my motivations for looking at this era:

Back to the Future?

How the 1980s made modern rugby league. 

It was the Spring of 1996 and the RFL Chief Executive Maurice Lindsay was in a combative mood. Still reeling from the civil war that was prompted by his proposal to merge clubs together, Lindsay was adamant that the new competition would change the trajectory of the game: “Super League will represent a dramatic sea change in approach, a quantum leap in thinking. Life is changing. We have to change with it. You can’t stop history developing”.

At the centre of the Super League vision was the idea that rugby league was going to expand beyond its traditional areas. “We are moving toward a city/large town league”, Lindsay declared, with Newcastle, Bristol, the Midlands, and London viewed as essential areas for growth.

Almost thirty years have passed since we switched from winter to summer and the dreams of league becoming a truly national game have all but diminished. Since the financial crash of 2008, the aim of the sport has been survival in the face of declining television deals and sponsorship interest.  

The arrival of IMG to ‘reimagine’ the sport for the next century is an acknowledgement that we have fallen way behind our competitors in football, cricket, darts, and rugby union in attracting commercial revenue.

In many ways the arrival of Super League was the ‘reimagining’ of the game for the 21^st century. For many years people had sat around pubs and clubs of the north and debated what would happen if rugby league had the resources, television coverage and media profile that it had always desired. Super League was to be the platform to finally turn dreams into reality.  

Although the initial announcement of Super League in 1995 was a swift one, arranged hastily in a crazy 24 hours that is impinged on the memory of any journalist that covered it, the journey to that moment began fifteen years earlier.

The 1970s had been a tough period for the game. From declining attendances to tabloid campaigns to have its “violence” banned from television, even glamour club Wigan were on life support. And when the Australian Kangaroos humiliated Great Britain on the 1982 Invincible tour, the game was at the point of no return.

What happened to the game in the 1980s and early 90s is the central question I seek to address in my new book Hope and Glory: Rugby League in Thatcher’s Britain which will be published this August.

In the popular imagination of the country, the 1980s have been mythologised as the decade when everything went wrong for rugby league towns. The traditional working class - of the mines, factories, and cotton mills - were the hapless victims of Thatcherite economic policies.

But while people are naturally drawn to the hardship, the story of rugby league shows there is a richer, more nuanced, and complex story to tell.

It was a period of change that was more dramatic and eventful than anything that has come before or since. Watching a game from 1980 and another from 1995 is like watching two sports from different planets. Central to that was the rise of the professional ‘celebrity’ player and the speed at which the game changed.

This was the era of bold expansion into new areas such as London and Sheffield, as well as Kent, Carlisle, and Nottingham. But it was also about the resilience and revival of traditional teams such as Featherstone, Widnes and Keighley. Innovation was found in some of the most unlikely places. Long before Netflix’s Sunderland till I Die came along, for example, unfashionable clubs like Doncaster opened their changing rooms to filmmakers to shoot award-winning documentaries.

In an age before social media, people such as Harry Edgar developed Open Rugby to give players, writers, and administrators the space to engage in the battle for ideas. Out of those debates came the physical reshaping of rugby league's image, from how the pundits talked about it and how the cameras filmed it, to how the advertising agencies made posters about it.

Hope and Glory reminds us that nothing is set in stone. The book is about an attitude and a philosophy that rugby league should not be constrained by the limits that outsiders and institutionalised ways of thinking places upon it.

As IMG hope to ‘reimagine’ the game for the next century, the future of Super League remains uncertain. By going back to the very beginning of this story, we can begin to understand what it was all really about. 

 

 

Sold. That's my Xmas present.

[OnStrike]

20 hours ago, Tides Of History said:

Thanks mate - Delighted to make the long list.

No RL book has ever won the award so obviously it would be great if it does but its a pretty strong field this year. As ever my thanks go to people like @marklaspalmasand @John Drakefor their insights when i was researching and writing on here!!

It is now in the hands of a six person panel - BUT...you can vote for it to be the best cover of the year.

If people wish to I would really appreciate their support - voting via the link below

https://news.williamhill.com/judge-a-book-by-its-cover/

 

 

Done. Good luck

[Angelic Cynic]

 

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/no-helmets-required/2024/jan/23/anthony-broxton-rugby-leagues-been-on-sky-for-30-years-and-we-are-arguably-weaker-than-ever

[JonM]

Spot on that Guardian interview, agree with all of that.

[gingerjon]

11 minutes ago, JonM said:

Spot on that Guardian interview, agree with all of that.

That rugby league is in a weaker position now than ever?

It’s simply not remotely true.

[JonM]

47 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

That rugby league is in a weaker position now than ever?

It’s simply not remotely true.

Yes, I'd kind of skipped over that part - completely disagree with that, we're clearly far stronger in most important respects now.

That quote, though, was in the context of a question about national visibility/ profile, where I think that is indeed true. And of course, that's the part that the sub-editor has used for the headline, as you'd expect. Random people could name rugby league players back then, and not just in the north. That's not true today, probably Richie Myler is the only RL player with any kind of public profile.

[RigbyLuger]

7 minutes ago, JonM said:

Random people could name rugby league players back then, and not just in the north. That's not true today, probably Richie Myler is the only RL player with any kind of public profile.

But I think that's the same for most sports these days, thanks to how football dominates. I could probably have a go at naming an England test team from the mid 90s and get far more than the team playing India today, but that might be a memory thing!

 

Coverage in the Guardian has gone down hill as well, as evidenced by no report on Malcolm Alker's death, for example. Not a single story for 9 days? 

Edited January 25 by RigbyLuger

[Eddie]

On 02/09/2023 at 12:43, OnStrike said:

Just finished this @Tides Of History and really enjoyed it. 

Having just put it down, my initial thought on finishing it is to wonder why (through the whole period covered in the book probably up till now) powerful people in the game seem to think there is something inherently 'wrong' about the game being (or being seen as) a primarily northern, working class sport. They are so desperate to shed the image of 'northerness' and/or working class culture that they don't realise that without that, you're left with one sport among many. Surely the uniqueness of its history and tradition should be a selling point, not a reason to be embarrassed? I write that as a Londoner with no real connection to north family wise or whatever. Especially with the mergers at the end, when people didn't want them, the 'modernisers' just assume people haven't listened properly or are too thick to actually understand what they really want.

Anyway, great book and congratulations on it and all the best.

Tbf I don’t think the games leaders are doing anything to try to shed Rugby League’s image as Northern and working class, and haven’t done so since the first few years of SL. They certainly aren’t trying to expend the game out of Northern working class areas, in fact they’re hindering individuals who are. 

[Hopping Mad]

23 minutes ago, RigbyLuger said:

But I think that's the same for most sports these days, thanks to how football dominates. I could probably have a go at naming an England test team from the mid 90s and get far more than the team playing India today, but that might be a memory thing!

 

Coverage in the Guardian has gone down hill as well, as evidenced by no report on Malcolm Alker's death, for example. Not a single story for 9 days? 

Certainly true, as you say, for every sport that isn't football.

Does Richie Myler have a public profile only because he split up with somebody who had a public profile? I'm pretty sure Myler could walk through the streets of York and not be recognised.

Anthony Broxton (whose book, on the whole, I enjoyed - even though it appears - "growing up in 1990s Wigan" - he has no direct experience of the Seventies and Eighties) says "history [whatever that is] is written by the winners". I'll trade a couple more oft-quoted remarks about history (my subject at university, as it happens, 40 years ago): "There's no such thing as history; only historians. That's how we know about the past" and "History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice". 

Edited January 25 by Hopping Mad

[RigbyLuger]

9 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Tbf I don’t think the games leaders are doing anything to try to shed Rugby League’s image as Northern and working class, and haven’t done so since the first few years of SL. They certainly aren’t trying to expend the game out of Northern working class areas, in fact they’re hindering individuals who are. 

The celebration of Mick Morgan's commentary backs that up, though many disagree!

[JonM]

32 minutes ago, RigbyLuger said:

But I think that's the same for most sports these days, thanks to how football dominates. I could probably have a go at naming an England test team from the mid 90s and get far more than the team playing India today, but that might be a memory thing!

Yes, and of course, it reflects the changing media landscape - live TV shows on BBC/ITV get a fraction of the audience of the past, the newspaper industry is dying fairly rapidly and so there is much less opportunity for sports stars, actors, comedians etc to get some kind of national profile. It does mean that are many more niches to occupy - Youtubers who amass millions of views who most people will never have heard of, and so on. 

Perhaps, SL taking control of its own destiny through streaming rather than being paid via a monopoly broadcaster is the model of the near future, and at that point the game's marketing is about finding new audiences for subscriptions, and part of that is or should be making players and coaches into public figures.

[RigbyLuger]

7 minutes ago, JonM said:

part of that is or should be making players and coaches into public figures.

Clubs might need to give more access to actual media with an audience, with the way that some journalists complain about that on social media. Who are the outlets we should aim at?

[soulboy]

2 hours ago, gingerjon said:

That rugby league is in a weaker position now than ever?

It’s simply not remotely true.

Your talking drivel.

The sport that cant get sponsors.

A virtual non existent media profile.

Zero international games.

IMG...LOL

On a personal note, i got my train tickets today for the woodentops ( warrington ) visit to london on march 17th. Looking foward to it .