As with the North, the Rugby players in Wales couldn't afford to take the time away from work to train and play rugby. They wanted paying for their time and effort to compensate for the hours missed at their 'normal jobs'.

After seeing the same happen up North, and the split in 1895, the RFU poured a lot of money into Welsh Rugby (and turned a blind eye to any payments to players), to stop their players and clubs from being lured away to RL (although some players were still turning to RL up until the early 90's).

This effectively made Welsh RU semi-pro and covered up by the RU world.

There was a good article about this I read last year (tried looking but can't find it).

Don't know about Yorkshire but in Lancs it was mainly mine workers. There were plenty of cotton mills but they were predominantly in none RL towns like Bolton, Blackburn, Burnley etc. Think the heavy industries, apart from the mills, were common to both South Wales and Northern England.

You might be right, apart from the fact that Wigan certainly had its fair share of cotton mills.
However, most of the workforce in the cotton mills were women as this type of work, although hard, was less pphysical than some of the heavy engineering or coal mining.

Interesting but when I did a Masters degree the academic focus was on researching then assessing academically published articles to support an arguement rather than gathering largely unsubstantiated opinion from a public forum.

Then again it was an MSc rather than an MA..........

I can't wait to mark this essay!

Whoops - busted!

Erm...credit for initiative??

ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5 ... AA300_.jpg Try this Written by Ian Golden who is the current Welsh RL media guy and all round good bloke. It does cover the history of RL in wales too. He is on twitter too I'm sure if you needed any explanations you could contact him and get some good opinions.

ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5 ... AA300_.jpg Try this Written by Ian Golden who is the current Welsh RL media guy and all round good bloke. It does cover the history of RL in wales too. He is on twitter too I'm sure if you needed any explanations you could contact him and get some good opinions.

Might I also direct your 'reading' towards the RFU turning a blind eye to paying players in wales (shamateurism) for fear of losing the welsh to RL they had some idea that if Wales turned to RL the southwest would follow and RU would be confined to a small area around London.

Should be plenty of that

Victorians and sport by Mike Huggins was one of the books I used for an essay on sport and class last year. It's good for some general background reading and as far as I remember had a bit to say on the 1895 split.

I'd say a significant change for Australia were the gambling laws and leagues clubs. A lot of money was put into the game at that time which changed their capabilities compared to other sports.

Tony....can we all submit essays?

Check out " The Gould affair". Arthur Gould was a brilliant Welsh back, so brilliant that the Welsh RFU took up a public collection for him to reward his services to the game and also, I think, bought him a house. The RFU jumped in and said he was a professional for that and the Welsh RFU were so p333ed that they withdrew from the IRB. They did not play international rugby for at least one year, year was 189 something. The NU had started in England and so Wales were ripe for wholesale conversion. The RFU then saw the writing on the wall and, in true Corinthian fashion, backed down and re instated Wales. Gould was allowed back in the game but not as a player. Wales were satisfied and so remained in RU, and the RFU looked the other way on boot money etc. I think the RFU had been so damaged by the Northern rebellion that they could not allow the same thing to happen in Wales, amateur principles or no amateur principles. This is not the whole story but I think was a significant event in swaying Wales to remain with RU. Do some research to get the whole facts as this is just my take on it.

Ah, someone with a misplaced, unsubstantiated, superiority complex! There's always one!


MAs not only use articles, but also books to substantiate an academic argument. My advice to the original poster would be to get the reading list from TC and start there. Use journal serch engines (available through the univeristy library catalogue) to find articles relevant to the issues you decide to focus on.

Float bobs down, strike, reel in.