THE HISTORY of rugby league in France is one of oppression and obfuscation. An entertaining, working-class sport pushed into the shadows by authority and, for a number of years, even banned altogether.

The effects of this ban and the intentional bundling of the sport into obscurity are still felt today.

As the Rugby [union] World Cup ploughs on in France, the host country’s premier rugby league team, Catalans Dragons, were last night involved in a final-day fight for Super League’s 2023 League Leaders’ Shield. The most prestigious league title in European rugby league.

Catalans, along with St Helens and Wigan, were level on 38 points at the top of the Super League table heading into the final round, with Wigan having the advantage of a superior points difference.

All three were looking to win their games and top the table, while only two of the three would advance automatically to the play-off semifinals, putting them just one game away from the sport’s Grand Final. The team in third would have to start in the earlier round, along with teams finishing from 4th to 6th.

There was plenty at stake in what was one of the most exciting finishes to a sporting league season.

Despite this, it still feels like rugby league exists in the shadows, treated like a provincial, local sport by the mainstream establishment media.

There won’t be much mention of rugby league amid the blanket, national, and even global coverage of the Rugby [union] World Cup, despite the success of France’s teams.

As well as Catalans’ evolution into one of the top Super League sides (winning the League Leaders’ Shield and finishing runners-up in the Grand Final in 2021) another French side, Toulouse Olympique, also participated in Super League in 2022 and have already reached the Championship playoff semifinals in 2023 with another chance at promotion.

Perhaps a few players and coaches involved in the 2023 union World Cup used to play league, but other than that presence, there will not be much mention of it.

Even the omission of the word “union” from the official name of the Rugby World Cup could itself be seen as a condescending, intentional ignorance of the other code of rugby.

As a result, wider, global coverage of rugby often fails to specify the code when talking about union.

The newly formed Major League Rugby in the United States, for example, is actually a union competition despite the prominence of the word “league” in its name.

It’s a historic schism that still rumbles under the surface even in moments of harmony and respect, harking back to rugby league’s working-class roots.

Indeed, rugby league’s raison d’etre is social and political. It has to do with the necessity for professionalism in the sport, as workers needed compensating for the time spent away from their day jobs.

As increasing amounts of money came into sports in the late 19th and early 20th century, and the demands on players increased, they deserved payment for their time, work, and skill.

Just as clubs from the industrial north and Midlands were the founders of the first professional national association football league, it was in the north of England where the professional, working-class version of rugby, rugby league, was formed.

It is there, and in south-east and eastern Australia, that the sport is most popular, but there is also a pocket of France that remains a rugby league stronghold against the odds.

Were it not for a ban placed on rugby league by the Vichy government in France in the 1940s, it might now rival association football countrywide as one of the country’s most popular sports, or at least further reflect its popularity in the north of England and Australia.

French rugby league grew in popularity during the 1930s, seeing plenty of support later in that decade from the Popular Front government, which consisted of a range of left-wing groups including communists and socialists.

By this time, rugby league was receiving plenty of positive, excited coverage in the press despite sections of the French media pushing negative coverage influenced by the French Rugby [union] Federation (FFR).

In his book The Oval World, rugby historian Tony Collins writes that rugby league was being referred to as “Neo-Rugby” in France following a game between England and Australia held in Paris in December 1933.

Though Leo Lagrange, who held positions as secretary of state for sport and leisure in the Popular Front government, was against professionalism in sport, it was he who removed what were effectively bans (even pre-Vichy) by the FFR on rugby league teams playing on municipal pitches. The FFR had also discouraged the teaching of rugby league in schools.

Jean Zay, a Jewish socialist who was minister for education and arts-related matters for the Popular Front, was more understanding of the need for players to be paid, holding similar views to those that led to the establishment of rugby league in England and Australia.

An article in Le Monde diplomatique states that Zay proposed, on March 7, 1939, “a status for semi-professional athletes inspired by what prevailed within the nouveau rugby.

“Professional athletes will have to be considered workers who deserve a salary and guarantees.”

This led to an influx of union players to the league code in France and an increase in the popularity of league clubs, especially in the country’s south-east.

The eventual break-up of the Popular Front came shortly before the second world war, and as the Vichy regime took control of the south of France in 1940, the semi-professional rugby league teams in that region and beyond, who were beginning to thrive, were banned.

Worse still, they were specifically targeted by the right-wing Vichy government because of previous favourable treatment from the left-wing Popular Front.

“The minister for family and youth, Jean Ybarnegaray, was unequivocal,” writes Collins.

“‘The fate of rugby league is clear. Its life is over and it will quite simply be deleted from French sport,’ he [Ybarnegaray] declared in August 1940.”

Key figures in the development of rugby league became targets for the regime, along with socialists, Jews, trade unionists, and any former members of the popular front.

Lagrange was killed in the war in 1940 while Zay was murdered by Vichy’s paramilitary organisation, la Milice, in 1944.

Even following the downfall of the Vichy regime and the liberation of France, rugby league was at best neglected, at worst it faced the same obstacles put in place during the Vichy period.

“When Paul Barriere, the future president of the French Rugby League, went to Paris in September 1944... he was told that there was no reason to alter the Vichy decision to ban the game. None of the assets seized by Vichy would be returned,” writes Collins.

“Rugby league was therefore allowed to be played but under very restrictive circumstances.

“It could not be played in schools, no more than 200 professional players could be engaged and, perhaps worst of all, was forbidden to call itself rugby.

“Instead, it had to go by the name of jeu a treize, or game of thirteen.

“The sport which had suffered the most under Vichy was treated as if it had been the guilty party.”

Regardless of how much government support or media coverage anyone believes a particular sport deserves, no sport should be subjected to the kind of suppression experienced by rugby league.

There are parallels between the treatment of rugby league in France and the treatment of women’s football, which itself was subjected to bans in England and elsewhere.

It is for this reason that these sports deserve a leg-up. As once popular, since politically stifled working-class, community pastimes for spectators and participants, both professional and amateur, they are owed as much.