history of rugby league
rugby league started in 1895 in Huddersfield ,Yorkshire when the Northern rugby football union broke away from the established Rugby football union and created their own seperate competition. Similar things happened over in Australia and New zealand aswell. There, on 8 August 1907 the NSW rugby league was found at Bateman's Hotel in George Street. From there the new competition went from within NSW and into Queensland creating STATE OF ORIGIN. In 1967 the first proffesional game was played on a sunday. In 1966, the introduced a rule that a team in possession was allowed three play-the-balls and on the fourth tackle a scrum was to be formed. This was increased to six tackles in 1972 and in 1983 the scrum was replaced by a handover. In 1997 two competitions were run alongside each other in Australia, after which a peace deal in the form of the National Rugby League was formed. In 1977 2 seperate competitions were formed. One was NRL and the other was super league which is now for South Africa Australia and New zealand and is played with rugby Union rules. In 2009, it was the most watched sport on Australian television, with an aggregate audience of 128.5 million viewers The NRL has since become recognised as the sport's flagship competition and since that time has set record TV ratings and crowd figures making NRL obviously Australias greatest sport ever.