The other day I was reading a rather interesting article by Rob Peat in the archives section of the southstander.com front page about when rugby league was made illegal in France. He states that when France was defeated In WW2, many from the right of French politics went into eager collaboration with their Nazi overlords, setting up a puppet government in the spa town of Vichy. Naturally this contained many 'establishment’ friends of the beleaguered FFR the perfect opportunity to destroy league.

Under the pretence that professional sport was damaging to the moral fibre of the nation the Vichy government produced a decree of 19th December 1941 that dissolved the French Rugby League, confiscated their property, grounds and assets.

rlAll other professional sports such as cycling and football were ignored and naturally Unions own shamateurism was overlooked. Moreover, the playing of rugby league in itself was outlawed and was made illegal!rl

Now roll forward 2010 and we no longer have the Nazi party around thank goodness, but my friend has a theory that Remnant Nazis do exist. It’d all make sense wouldn’t it considering how rugby league isn’t reaching the potential it should be.

I recommend that you all give rlthis a readrl and decide for yourselves!

Is Rugby League Been Suppressed By Remnant Nazis or isn’t it?

Read this too;

The Forbidden Game The Untold Story of French Rugby League By Mike Rylance

Being.

It's a well known fact that league was a target because of it's links to the working man in France.

We have laws protecting gypsies rights following their deportation to Auschwitz and the like. Reparations were made to Jews and the others who lost property and loved ones. I'm not going to put it on that level but my understanding is the confiscated grounds, property and assets were not returned because it was in France and not in Germany. Were they ever given reparations?

Would love to read it, but its too expensive to buy and I bet its hard to find and lend. If anyone can help on the latter I’d be grateful!



I don’t know this answer personally but hopefully someone who does have knowledge about this particular subject will reply to this.

Quote: Damo-Leeds "Would love to read it, but its too expensive to buy and I bet its hard to find and lend. If anyone can help on the latter I’d be grateful! '" £7.75 delivered. www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listin ... ition=used

Quote: Damo-Leeds "Would love to read it, but its too expensive to buy and I bet its hard to find and lend. If anyone can help on the latter I’d be grateful! '" £7.75 delivered. www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listin ... ition=used

Rugby League has failed to "take off" due to bad management over the better part of a century. It has nothing to do with the "Boys from Brazil"....and everything to do with the every man for himself attitude of the clubs owners in the mid 20th Century. The Wigan dominance of ther 80's was also damaging.....with the general population of the UK only seeing a couple of games on TV every year and a CC final that pretty much always ended with the wigan captain getting the trophy.....

Secret Nazi Organisations?...Did I log into the sinbin by mistake

I want to borrow another quote now -

[iThe majority of the governments, government agencies, authorities, agents, police and military officials are not aware of the presence of infiltrators in their midst, but would be the first to seek to remove them. The Remnant-Nazis are very, very clever! They have not only managed to deceive their ultimate enemies, most of those of us who love democracy and who love human rights and individual freedoms/liberties, but they have also managed to deceive those whose anti-social and reactionary 'values' are similar and who they plant/position in our midst![/i
Jean-Pierre A. Fenyo

Whilst upfront we can blame bad management on the reason why rugby league has failed to take off. But it wouldn’t surprise me if the Remnant-Nazis have deceived the management of rugby league since the war. As Rob Peat mentioned in his article - Cycling, Football and Union wasn’t touched by the Nazi reign in France. I can’t speak for Cycling, but Football and Union have seemed to have done better than league since the war - bad management or not.

I also want to add that Rugby League has very working class roots from the very beginning. We split from Union because the southerners had an unfair advantage over the northerners when it came to playing the game. Rugby League was all about fairness whilst the Nazis..

No, but for reasons I don't understand, my link brings up only an abbreviated form of the article. Google for "financial times rugby league world cup" and you should see the whole thing.

London Harlequins, [sizeScarlets, based in Wrexham,[/size and Catalan Dragons of France play in Superleague, the premier domestic competition

How many name changes is that in 2 years
FFS......the FT used to be a decently written and researched paper.....now it's not even a pink chip wrapper.

I've done a lot of research into this, and have a degree in French, so here's my twopennorth on this.

The Nazis never made a specific request for RL to be banned. Professional sport was banned by the Vichy regime- but this meant sport in its pro form, not all sports which had pro setups. Association football was not banned, but its professionalism was suppressed.

Two people are behind the banning of RL. The first is Jean Ybanegaray, who was a minister in Petain's government. He was from French RL's heartlands but was a devotee of pelota, which he believed was the best sport going. He was the one who organised the ban.

But the inspiration is the second figure, the writer Robert Brasillach. He was RU-obsessed and hated RL with a passion. He used his connections with the regime (he ran its unoffical paper, 'Je suis partout') to have RL suppressed as a 'threat to the morals of French youth'.

My point therefore is this: the French RU authorities have suggested for years that the Nazis were behind the ban. But in reality, influential RU figures provoked it all, and happily confiscated money and assets from RL setups and never paid it back.

Vichy was full of opportunists who used the Nazis as a smokescreen for their own activities and conveniently buried these activities under the war crimes of the Nazis after the war. And the French RU establishment was no better.

French RL was in fact banned on 15th October 1940 by the Vichy regime, at a time when RL's heartlands were not under German occupation. Vichy and its RU friends acted alone.

Back on topic....
Yes.....RL was generally rolled over by RU in vichy France....but the OP's point was that there are still Nazi's around who are suppressing Leagues growth at the moment.......
Given that these Nazis would be about 80yrs old + and if they were alive still.....they would be German or Italian and have little or know interest in any sport. Furthermore......most of the Vichy collaberators were "dealt with" at the end of the occupation of France.
Remnant Nazis......PMSL.....really Damo-Leeds....you are a card

I did enjoy the numerous facists salutes that were made in the general direction of the RFU offices at Twickenham, when the cup final was held there a couple of years ago.