History
See also: History of rugby leagueRugby football was introduced into France by the British in the early 1870s. It quickly began to flourish in the poorer, more rural south. The French rugby clubs remained in affiliation with the English Rugby Football Union and IRB when rugby split into rugby union and rugby league in 1895.
Reports of professionalism and on-field violence in internationals led to France's suspension from the Five Nations Championship in 1931. Following development work by both Harry Sunderland (on behalf of the Australian Rugby League) and the Rugby Football League based in England, the Australian and Great British Test teams played an exhibition game at Stade Pershing in Paris in late December 1933. In 1934, Jean Galia took a French team that had never played rugby league to Yorkshire and Lancashire in England. The French Rugby League was formed on 6 April 1934. Looking round for an alternative, many French players turned to rugby league, which soon became a popular game in France, particularly in the south of the country. Within five years, the number of rugby league clubs in France approached the number of rugby union clubs (despite union's fifty year head start). By 1939 there were around 157 rugby league clubs in France, including amateur teams and 13 semi-professional rugby league clubs. The same year three leading rugby union clubs – Narbonne, Carcassonne and Brive – switched to rugby league.
The invasion of France by Germany in May 1940 divided the country into Occupied France in the north and a southern pro-Nazi Vichy France, the latter of which roughly corresponded to the rugby-playing heartlands. The Vichy Government under Philippe Pétain associated rugby league with the pre-war socialist government, the United Kingdom and with the General Charles de Gaulle. Some of the French Rugby Union's senior administrators took advantage of their close relationship with the new regime to have rugby league outlawed as a "corrupter" of French youth. All funds as well as grounds and equipment belonging to the French Rugby League Federation were confiscated and partially handed over to rugby union and in majority to handball. The figure of assets stripped has been estimated at two million 1940 French francs, none of which was ever returned. In addition, rugby league players switched to rugby union or other sports or quit rugby altogether.
The federation was reinstated in September 1944, but it could not recapture the popularity it had lost to union.
Read more about this topic: Rugby League In France
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