History
Initially Great Britain were represented by a team made up of players from the Northern Rugby Football Union, known simply as the "Northern Union" side. Their first ever match was a win against a touring New Zealand side in January, 1908. The following season Great Bitain played host to the Australian side. The Northern Union's first match against the Kangaroos was a 22-all draw.
In June, 1910 the Northern Union embarked on its successful first tour of Australasia.
Great Britain defeated a touring Australian side 2-1 in the 1921–22 Kangaroo tour of Great Britain.
The team travelled to Australia again on the HMS Indomitable in 1946 for the first post-war tour.
In 1954 the first ever Rugby League World Cup was held in France and Great Britain were the winners. They came second in the 1957 World Cup in Australia and history was made when the returning French and British squads visited South Africa and played a series of exhibition matches in Benoni, Durban and East London, all of which were won by the British.
The Lions won the next World Cup in 1960.
In 2002 Great Britain suffered their wost ever defeat at the hands of the Australians when they went down 64-10 in Sydney.
More recently, Great Britain enjoyed a three nil series whitewash of the touring New Zealand side in the 2007 All Golds tour.
Read more about this topic: Great Britain National Rugby League Team
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“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
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“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)