Who made rugby league official?

Answer 1

The RFU had been formed in 1871 by representatives of 21 clubs - all of which were located in southern England and most were within London. By the early 1890's Rugby was widespread and well over half the RFU's clubs were in northern England. The working classes of the north of England and South Wales were particularly taken with rugby over soccer.

As with rugby clubs right across England, the majority of the clubs of the North were created and operated by men of the ruling classes. However, as the majority of the population in Yorkshire and Lancashire was working class, the clubs, teams and crowds quickly displayed a cross-class nature. Hull FC was formed in 1865 by a young gentlemen who had been at Rugby School and immediately took on members who were plumbers and glaziers. An ever rarer example was Leeds Athletic which was started by working men on their own initiative. It began with an advertisement in a local newspaper placed by a rail clerk.

Other clubs had religious affiliations at the start which are now long forgotten, but others such as Wakefield Trinity were marked by this for the rest of their existence. Wakefield was formed in 1873 as a sporting arm of the Holy Trinity Church Young Men's Society.

In Lancashire, rugby was started at Rochdale in 1867 by a magistrate and numerous business owners and self-employed men. Within a year they were all playing alongside new members when working class men were allowed to join as well. This club was the forerunner of the Rochdale Hornets who arrived in 1871 with an open door approach to membership. At Rochdale they were also able to insist on gate money as they played on an enclosed field. This became an increasing tendency in the North. Some clubs though, like Wigan, did not have an enclosed field and had to rely on crowd donations from collection boxes.

Answer 2

A schoolboy on the football fields of Eton. Or something like that