Background
While in the early days rugby league had an established structure outside of the professional leagues with county-wide competitions and the like, this soon decayed into local district leagues usually only featuring teams from one or two towns with no input from the professional game. This eventually saw the number of amateur rugby league clubs reduce to a mere 150 in the early 1970s.
Against this background British Amateur Rugby League Association were formed in 1973. One of their first acts was to merge the vast majority of the district leagues into three regional leagues: the Yorkshire League, the Pennine League and the North Western Counties League. For geographical reasons the Hull League, the Cumberland League, the Barrow League and the London League were left as they were.
This allowed clubs to play at more appropriate standards as there were more divisions, and this factor along with the improved governance of BARLA saw the standard and numbers of clubs rise quickly. However, while there was a National Cup, the best amateur clubs were still divided between six leagues and thus the desire for an amateur National League arose.
Read more about this topic: History Of The National Conference League
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)