Thirty years on from the Clash of the Codes, the idea that Wigan and Bath shared the spoils still lingers. The reality, as the evidence shows, was very different.

THREE decades ago, rugby’s Berlin Wall came tumbling down.

In 1895, a group of northern rugby clubs broke away from the London-based Rugby Football Union (RFU) so they could compensate players who missed work shifts to play rugby. They formed what is known today as the Rugby Football League, and it left us with two versions of a game called rugby.

On 26th August, 1995, almost 100 years to the day after rugby’s schism occurred, the RFU finally sanctioned professionalism. The practice had been covert almost since the day rugby was formed — not for nothing was the union ethos known by the ironic compound noun “shamateurism”. But now the union authorities would openly permit players to be paid.

And that would have ramifications. Players, even amateurs, who had previously played rugby league had been banned from participating in rugby union because they were deemed to have “professionalised” themselves. But now that union too was professional, such a ban — if indeed it was legal before — was unsustainable.

Not only that, all of a sudden league and union players could play against each other. And in the new spirit of détente was born the Clash of the Codes. In 1996 Wigan, the champions of league, would take on Bath, the champions of union, over two games (one under each set of rules). This month, May, sees the 30th anniversary of what was intended to break down the walls, built brick by brick out of suspicion and contempt, for a century.

Eighteen years ago, I wrote an article lamenting the fact that in the intervening years since the Wigan-Bath encounters an urban myth had developed. It ran like this. The outcome of the Clash of the Codes had been a draw. Wigan had won the league match, Bath the union match — honours even. Author Nicholas Hobbes had just released a book saying the games had taught us nothing. I’d hoped to nip this myth in the bud, but in all truth, over the intervening years, it’s become more entrenched. Even Wikipedia tells us the outcome was “unsurprisingly a draw”. No, it wasn’t. “Bath restored union’s honour,” said a retrospective in the Daily Telegraph. No, they didn’t.

Let it be stated now that this was not the case. Even the bare statistics prove it. Over four halves of rugby, Wigan lost only one.

They trounced Bath in the league encounter at Maine Road, 82-6. (It later transpired Wigan had a “gentleman’s agreement” not to score more than 100 points — for periods of the second half they played a man short and used youth-squad members off the substitutes’ bench. Meanwhile, in the second half Bath were allowed unlimited interchanges).

In the return union match at Twickenham, Bath ran out victors 44-19, meaning the aggregate score was 101-50 to Wigan, although had union’s scoring system applied, it would have been 117-51. That’s nobody’s definition of parity.

At Twickenham Wigan fielded two retired players, Graeme West (because he was tall and might help them win lineouts) and Joe Lydon (because he was a good kicker). It backfired. Even so, Bath’s first score was a penalty, their second a penalty try for a scrum infringement, while another came from an astonishingly wicked bounce of the ball.

Although they were endlessly and lured into conceding penalties, when Wigan got to grips with the complexities, Bath were put under pressure — more than once Wigan were held up in Bath’s in-goal and had a try denied for a forward pass replays later deemed was not.

It was 25-0 to Bath at half-time (in the league match it had been 52-0 to Wigan) and Wigan hadn’t won a single ruck. But then they ditched West and Lydon and began playing freely.

The second half was drawn 19-19, and by the end Wigan were scoring at will — two length-of-the-field tries by Craig Murdock (one begun in Wigan’s in-goal) a testament to their superior ball movement. By the end it looked as though Wigan would score every time they got the ball, and the referee blew time two minutes early. Presumably to spare Bath’s blushes.

But there was more. Between the two matches Wigan took part in the Middlesex Sevens at Twickenham. Playing rugby union rules, they beat Richmond, Harlequins and Leicester to reach the final, where they defeated Wasps after giving them a 15-point start. Twice they came back to win having been three tries down.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what commentators were saying at the time, many of them rugby union journalists. “Better than anything seen at Twickenham all season,” wrote The Independent’s Steve Bale. “Some of us will never look at rugby union skills in the same light. For union it is a time of humility.” The union writers also noted that Wigan only had the ball for two minutes more than Bath in the league encounter, yet scored 76 more points.

Mike Langley of The Observer said the intervening Middlesex Sevens was the most significant sporting event he had ever witnessed. “Four matches that shook the world,” he wrote. In the Daily Telegraph, Paul Hayward wrote: “Rugby league won the series hands down. Wigan excel in the skills rugby followers most value: running and handling. Union looked like a game for farmers.”

Although farmers might legitimately object, Hayward’s point was apposite. Rugby union supporters have often decried league for being a stripped-down version of their game, but if that’s true there should be nothing — and indeed there isn’t — of any significance in rugby league that rugby union players aren’t already conversant with. Tackling, passing, running, scoring and kicking are common to both codes. Yet when challenged with putting these into practice in the league match, Bath were found significantly wanting.

When Wigan faced the lauded “technicalities” of union — the likes of lineouts, rucks and mauls, all alien concepts — their performance was passable. Top union sides had lost by far more than 44-19 to Bath, and when it came to the sevens version of union, Wigan wiped the floor. John Mason in the Telegraph admitted as much. “Whether die-hards like it or not, Wigan demonstrated a host of superior skills currently absent from the union game: those common to both sports.” And that is the key point. “Quite simply, Wigan annihilated Bath,” summed up Richard Williams in The Guardian.

Of course, Stephen Jones, The Sunday Times union correspondent, belittler and bane of rugby league, insisted Bath “pulled their punches to prevent a massacre”, arguing they did not contest the scrummages. They may indeed have taken care not to injure the inexperienced Wigan forwards, but watch the video and decide for yourself. One of Bath’s tries even comes from a scrum pushover. Wigan were constantly swamped in the scrummage, and Bath still won the ball even if they really did take it easy. As I wrote 18 years ago, “sour grapes taste like finest Sauternes when drunk from the cup of Stephen Jones”.

The estrangement of the codes is history. Rugby league now has the rapprochement it always demanded and deserved. But fans of a certain vintage recall the snobbish animosity rugby league endured at the hands of intransigent union authorities for a century, and how the game was stymied by their actions and those of a sometimes compliant media.

In May 1996 rugby league had a chance to right a few wrongs and offer the general public a chance to compare it and the ability of its players directly with rugby union. That it did so with such authority, such aplomb and such dignity should not be diminished by revisionist history. Rugby league, for a few brief days, was no longer a sporting pariah.

We may increasingly live in what has become known as the “post-truth society”. You don’t like something, you decry it as “fake news”. But those who were there in 1996 know exactly what happened.

And it sure as hell wasn’t a draw.

First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 520 (May 2026)