Starting out as a casual reader, then a collector of back copies, and ending up as a columnist and regular contributor, IAN GOLDEN recounts his personal history with Rugby League World.
CONGRATULATIONS to Rugby League World on 500 issues, and when I have this issue in my hands, I’ll be the proud owner of all 500.
My personal history with the publication goes back to around 1990, when it was named Open Rugby, or “Open Rugby League” as I always read it, knowing exactly the sport it was covering. I became an RL fan in 1989, all thanks to Jonathan Davies going up north and then watching a few Widnes games on TV.
By 1993, after buying for a few years at WH Smith in the centre of Cardiff, I had the magazine reserved in my local newsagent. I did think about subscribing by post but after seeing that the publication (in those days) charged for postage, I decided against it. I even phoned to enquire why and was told “we’re only a small publication”. I argued that they wouldn’t have to pay commission to shops, but they weren’t budging.
I loved the “style change” in August 1998 when the magazine was bought out by League Publications Ltd and again embraced the later name change to “Rugby League World”. I had started putting my magazines into binders by that time, discarding all my old copies of “Shoot”. I started using the “official” binders in 2010 when the magazine changed its style for the better and stopped using staples.
So, about a decade ago, I decided to complete my collection. This was prompted when I saw that someone was selling most Open Rugby magazines from issue 20 up to the end of the 1990-91 season on eBay, most of them bound in official binders. Around the same time, a seller was offloading a box of RL programmes and magazines, which included every issue of Open Rugby from September 1991 to the end of 1992 with a few others thrown in. It was like it was made for me.
Issues 1-19 of Open Rugby was a fanzine style publication and finding original copies of those was going to be tough. Thankfully, original publisher Harry Edgar had reprinted them and was selling them as a batch. I remember needing one remaining issue somewhere along the line and luckily a fellow rugby league fan sent it to me with no charge, thanks to my appeal in League Express – I was there, or was I?
A couple of years ago, I went to look something up and I noticed that issue 341 was missing – September 2009. I had no idea why, perhaps I took it out of its binder to be scanned? So after panicking and then missing out on a couple of eBay deals, Neil Ormston of the Rugby League Record Keepers Club, sent me his issue, as he’s not a collector, on the promise that if he ever needed a fact from it then I’d give it to him.
So that’s how I have a full collection and over the years and it’s massively helped me with my research for Wales Rugby League, especially with old student match reports, the amateur game in the 80s and more, so thanks for that.
But there’s more to Rugby League World for me.
By 2003, I was writing match reports for League Express and a year later, after being interviewed about Wales for the November 2004 issue, I proposed my first article for Rugby League World for the next one. Named “Have League will travel”, it was about my weekend watching Great Britain v Australia in London and then Scotland v Wales in Glasgow.
In 2005, I wrote two articles, first in July about a new professional club in Wales that was to be called “Celtic Crusaders”. I eventually worked for that club, replacing my love of a side that was about to rebrand. In October, I reported from Griffin Park in London from the last match as Broncos before they temporarily became Harlequins. That was the end of a five-year season ticket holding spell for me there.
Then in 2009, my RL life changed again. Crusaders moved north and I started working with South Wales Scorpions. Wanting to promote that RL still existed in the south, I suggested the idea of a column to then editor Richard de la Rivière. “As much as we admire what you’re doing down there…” was roughly the start of the reply I had.
A year later, once new editor John Drake had settled in, I tried again and was more successful. I wrote a couple of articles in the first two issues of 2011, the first about Wales winning the European Championship and qualifying for the Four Nations (that certainly helped things), the next about Wales’ young players coming through, then from March, a regular column called “Breathing Fire”. Over the years, it had a few styles, and I wrote the odd special article or two for the magazine during the time, until I was dropped in April 2015. New editor Joe Whiteley wanted to completely revamp the magazine and brought in players as writers, making it what I saw as a glorified Super League match programme. So, I went cap in hand to Forty20 and took my column, name and all, over there.
By 2017, Rugby League World had realised the error of their ways. Drake was back as editor and “Breathing Fire” returned, but under a different writer, as I was still at Forty20, my column now being called “Tan y Ddraig”, translated as “Dragon’s Fire” which was the name I actually suggested in the first place.
The pandemic came and went, and my direction had slightly changed again. Similar to when I’d fallen in love with “running” rugby league, I now had a passion for the wheelchair game. So last year, I pitched to Lorraine, our current editor, that I should now write the column for Rugby League World on this version of the sport, as it’s growing all the time.
So, this is where we are today. Rugby League World/Open Rugby has had its ups and downs, with and without me, but we’re here at issue 500. Quite amazing for something that started off as a handwritten publication in Oxford in 1976.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 500 (September 2024)
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