History
The team was formed in 1997 by Fred Bachaus and Phil Sipos. The Sharks were one of the charter franchises of the competition now known as the American National Rugby League (AMNRL), competing in its inaugural 1998 season. Though they played under the name New Jersey Sharks, they were actually based across state lines in nearby Levittown, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. Many players were drawn from the local Hibernian Rugby Football Club, or "Hibos".
Throughout their early years the Sharks were consistent playoff contenders, advancing to the Grand Final in 1999 and winning a minor premiership in 2002, though never winning a championship title. In 2007 they changed their name to the Bucks County Sharks, reflecting that they played in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. As a result of internal factors the Sharks suspended operations following the 2009 season, and did not play in the 2010 domestic competition. They remained active outside of the competition; they played a replacement game against the New York Knights after their scheduled opponents, the Northern Raiders, forfeited before the match. In December 2010, the Sharks announced they intended to return for the 2011 season. On January 31, 2011, they announced they would be committing to the AMNRL, rather than the upstart USA Rugby League.
Read more about this topic: Bucks County Sharks
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)