text:
Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary

Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary (Garrett) is a private seminary and graduate school of theology related to the United Methodist Church and is ecumenical in spirit. It is located in Evanston, Illinois, on the campus of Northwestern University. The seminary offers master's- and doctoral-level degrees, as well as certificate, micro-credentialing, and lifelong learning programs. It has thousands of alumni serving in ministry, education, organizational leadership, and public service throughout the world.

History
Garrett–Evangelical is the result of the interweaving of three institutions:
 * Founded in 1851 and beginning operations in 1853, the school is the result of a generous gift by benefactor Eliza Clark Garrett. Garrett Biblical Institute was the first Methodist seminary in the Midwest. It was established by the same group who founded Northwestern University, and both institutions have shared a campus in Evanston since their founding days. Its founders hoped that the school would shape mind and spirit for an educated clergy, a controversial topic as many local congregations looked with suspicion upon institutions of higher learning. Both Garrett and Northwestern University were early expressions of Methodists’ deep commitment to higher learning and making that learning increasingly accessible for leaders of the church and civil society.
 * The Chicago Training School, established in 1885, was a force for women in ministry and for developing social and educational service agencies throughout Chicago. Its primary mission was to train female leaders to advocate for the poorest residents of the city, many had either recently emigrated from Europe, or were from the formerly enslaved communities from southern states who made their way north as part of the Great Migration. The school also played a significant role in training missionaries for service throughout the world. The Chicago Training School merged with Garrett Biblical Institute in 1934, forming Garrett Theological Seminary.
 * Evangelical Theological Seminary, located in Naperville and founded as a seminary of the Evangelical Church (later the Evangelical United Brethren) in 1873, and was originally founded to serve the needs of the growing German-speaking immigrant communities. Garrett–Evangelical was formed in 1974 when the Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston merged with the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Naperville, Illinois (both UMC schools). The merged school occupied the Garrett campus in Evanston.

Garrett–Evangelical is on the campus of Northwestern University and continues associations with the university. Both institutions were founded by the same Methodist clergy and laity in the mid-nineteenth century. Garrett has been an institution that specializes in preparing pastoral leaders for congregational leadership, and has also been a pioneer in preparing women for ministry and public leadership.

Northwestern University
Garrett–Evangelical and Northwestern University have a relationship that is 170 years old. Founders established both institutions to provide a learned clergy for an educated church, and learned citizenry for the rapidly growing and expanding "North West," as the Chicagoland area was then known. Over the decades, the institutions have shared resources, including courses, buildings, faculties, libraries, parking, technology, and in its earliest days a joint Board of Trustees.

The Association of Chicago Theological Schools
The Chicago area boasts the greatest concentration of seminaries per capita of anywhere in the U.S. The Chicago area schools are organized into a cluster called The Association of Chicago Theological Schools. Garrett–Evangelical is one of the 11 member schools. The ACTS website states:
 * Together, the schools within ACTS offer a rich network of resources for theological education, making the association one of the outstanding centers of theological education in the world. Available to the approximately 3,000 students currently enrolled at its member schools is a faculty of more than 350, more than 1,000 courses offered annually, and library collections of 1.7 million volumes and nearly 5,000 currently received periodical subscriptions.

Center for the Church and the Black Experience
The oldest of Garrett's academic centers, it focuses on research, teaching, scholarship, leadership development, activism, spirituality, and the cultural impact and liturgical life of the black church, as well as centers the life, work and voices of black scholars, pastors and preachers, movement leaders, musicians, writers, poets, and artists.

Stead Center for Ethics and Values
Founded through the generosity of Mary Joy and Jerre L. Stead, the center draws together seminary resources, graduate professional schools, area religious leaders, and laity to address the compelling ethical issues facing contemporary society. The center engages in teaching and research on ethics and values by creating spaces for conversation, dialogues, and developing resources that enhance moral communities.

Ruben P. Job Institute for Spirituality and Spiritual Formation
Established in 2012, the Rueben P. Job Institute for Spirituality and Spiritual Formation seeks to resource laity and clergy, as well as advance research and training in the fields of Spirituality and Spiritual Formation. Named in honor of a figure in the field of Christian spiritual formation, Bishop Rueben P. Job, a Garrett–Evangelical alumnus.

Center for Asian/Asian American Ministry
The CAAM focuses its efforts on creating community for and among Asian descent students, while also centering Asian descent scholarship in the academic life of the seminary. The center also engages in support of ministries with communities of Asian descent in the Chicagoland area and beyond.

Styberg Preaching Institute
Named for its benefactors, Ernest and Bernice Styberg, the institute is a research center in homiletics focused on improving and strengthening the art and practice of preaching. It accomplishes this work through research initiatives, workshops, and conferences.

Hispanic-Latinx Center
The center provides resources and academic dialogues on critical issues for Hispanic-Latinx churches and communities addressing theological and practical aspects of ministry in cross-cultural contexts.

Center for Ecological Regeneration
The Center for Ecological Regeneration provides opportunities for eco-theological research, education and formation.

Notable alumni

 * Edsel Albert Ammons (B.D., 1956) – a bishop of the United Methodist Church
 * Hobart Baumann Amstutz (B.D.) – a bishop of The Methodist Church
 * James Hal Cone (M.Div. and Ph.D.) – father of Black Liberation Theology
 * Don Wendell Holter (B.D., 1930) – a bishop of the United Methodist Church
 * Bruce Johnson – a Methodist minister who worked closely with the Young Lords in Chicago
 * Jonathan D. Keaton (M.Div., 1971; S.T.D., 1979) – a bishop of the United Methodist Church
 * David J. Lawson (B.D., 1959) – a bishop of the United Methodist Church
 * George McGovern (No degree, 1946) – historian, politician, and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate
 * J. Gordon Melton (M.Div., 1968) – a research specialist in religion and New Religious Movements
 * Smokie Norful (attended) – American gospel singer and pianist who won a Grammy at the 47th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album in 2004
 * Lloyd John Ogilvie (M.Theology) – Presbyterian minister, author, and former Chaplain of the United States Senate
 * Bruce R. Ough (M.Div., 1978) – a bishop of the United Methodist Church
 * Henry C. Schadeberg (B.D., 1941) – politician
 * Lyle E. Schaller (B.D., 1957) – church consultant, church growth leader
 * John S. Stamm (graduate of Evangelical Theological Seminary-Naperville, Illinois [E.T.S.]) – bishop of the Evangelical Church
 * John McKendree Springer (B.D. from Garrett Biblical Institute, 1901) – pioneering Methodist missionary in Africa and bishop
 * Emilie Townes (Ph.D. 1989) womanist theologian and dean of Vanderbilt University Divinity School
 * Elmer Towns (M.R.E. from Garrett Theological Seminary) – co-founder of Liberty University
 * James Zwerg – a freedom rider before attending seminary

Former and current faculty

 * Edsel Albert Ammons – professor, 1968–1976
 * Ernest T. Campbell – professor of homiletics, 1982–1989
 * Wayne K. Clymer – professor of Pastoral Care, 1946–1957; dean, 1957–1967; president, 1967–1972 (all at Evangelical Theological Seminary, Naperville, Illinois); bishop of the United Methodist Church (1972–)
 * Georgia Harkness
 * Don Wendell Holter – professor of church history and missions (1949–1958); then founding president of St. Paul School of Theology
 * Jonathan D. Keaton – graduate teaching assistant in communications, ethics and society, and church and the Black experience (1970s at Garrett and Garrett–Evangelical)
 * Daniel Parish Kidder – professor of homiletics. Editor, and author of Mormonism and the Mormons (1844), Sketches of Residence and Travel in Brazil (1845), The Fratricide "Reminiscences of The West India Islands: (1851), Treatise on Homiletics (1864, 1884), The Christian Pastorate (1871); He also edited THE SUNDAY-SCHOLAR'S MIRROR: A Monthly Magazine for Children (1850–1854)
 * Helmer Ringgren
 * Rosemary Radford Ruether – Roman Catholic feminist scholar
 * John S. Stamm – professor of systematic theology at E.T.S. (1919–1926)
 * K. K. Yeo – Harry R. Kendall Professor of New Testament, 1996–


text:
User:Luciuskwok

Favourites:

 * Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority
 * SEPTA Regional Rail
 * R1 (SEPTA)
 * R2 (SEPTA)
 * R3 (SEPTA)
 * R5 (SEPTA)
 * R6 (SEPTA)
 * R7 (SEPTA)
 * R8 (SEPTA)
 * Philadelphia Flower Show
 * Keystone Corridor
 * Bel Canto (band)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Luciuskwok


text:
Mutton busting

Mutton busting is an event held at rodeos similar to bull riding or bronc riding, in which children ride or race sheep.

Description
In the event, a sheep is held still, either in a small chute or by an adult handler while a child is placed on top in a riding position. Once the child is seated atop the sheep, the sheep is released and usually starts to run in an attempt to get the child off. Often small prizes or ribbons are given out to the children who can stay on the longest. There are no set rules for mutton busting, no national organization, and most events are organized at the local level. The majority of children participating in the event fall off in less than 8 seconds. Age, height and weight restrictions on participants generally prevent injuries to the sheep, and implements such as spurs are banned from use. In most cases, children are required to wear helmets and parents are often asked to sign waivers to protect the rodeo from legal action in the event of injury.

History
Mutton busting was first introduced by Jack Daines at the Daines Ranch Pro Rodeo, near Innisfail, Alberta, Canada in the early 1960s. He wanted an event that would keep the younger kids from riding the rougher stock. He brought some of the family sheep to the bucking chutes.

The practice has been documented as having been introduced in the United States at the National Western Stock Show at least by the 1980s when an event was sponsored by Nancy Stockdale Cervi, a former rodeo queen. At that event, children ages five to seven who weighed less than 55 pounds could apply, and ultimately seven contestants were selected to each ride a sheep for six seconds. There are no statistics about the popularity of the sport, but anecdotal reports suggest thousands of children participate in such events every year in the U.S.

Supporters consider the event both entertaining and a way to introduce young children to the adult rodeo "rough stock" riding events of bull riding, saddle bronc and bareback riding, and may liken its rough-and-tumble nature to the way youth sports such as football are played. Organizations such as the ASPCA discourage the practice on the grounds that it does not promote kindness to, or respect of, animals.

The practice was banned in New York City in 2012, and in Alameda County, California in 2019.

title: Mutton busting


text:
Tenzin Ösel Hita

Tenzin Ösel Hita y Torres (born 1985 in Bubión, Granada, Spain) is a Spanish Tibetan Buddhist tulku and spiritual teacher. Born Ösel Hita Torres  to María Torres and Francisco Hita, he was designated soon after his birth as the tulku or reincarnation of Thubten Yeshe — making him one of only a handful of Western tulkus — and renamed Tenzin Ösel.

For many years, Hita was expected to succeed to leadership of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), the organization co-founded by Yeshe. As a university student, "Oz" (as he came to be known) gradually distanced himself from the FPMT, and in 2009 made media statements indicating his intention to pursue a life independent of that organization. However, he remained a follower of Tibetan Buddhism and an FPMT supporter, joining that organization's board of trustees in 2010.

Biography
Hita's parents, María Torres and Francisco Hita, had been students of Lama Yeshe, and the suggestion was raised soon after his birth that Hita might be Yeshe's tulku (reincarnation). Fourteen months later, after certain traditional tests, the Dalai Lama formally recognized him as such. As a child Ösel was heavily promoted by the FPMT, and made the subject of a book by Vicki Mackenzie, Reincarnation: The Boy Lama (Wisdom Publications, 1996). He is the fifth of nine siblings.

As a youth Hita studied traditional Tibetan subjects at Sera Monastery in southern India, and simultaneously received private tutoring in Western subjects.

At age 18, Hita gave up his monastic robes and distanced himself from the FPMT in favor of a more secular lifestyle, for example performing at the 2007 Burning Man festival. He later attended St. Michaels University School, a private high school in Victoria, British Columbia. Once he passed his ASATs in Canada, he moved to Switzerland and studied western philosophy, human rights, French and art. After six months he decided to leave for Italy, ending up in Bologna working with Matteo Passigato, an experienced camera operator. There he spent another six months working different jobs related to cinema and TV.

Once he came back to Spain he decided to study film. So at the age of 20 he spent two years at the NIC school in Madrid getting his director of cinema diploma. Then another year for director of photography. After that he did a master for documentaries at EIMA which took one more year. In 2011, Osel is said to have joined the board of the FPMT although as of January 2019 he is not listed as a Director on the FPMT website, and there has not been any notification that he was expelled or had resigned from or otherwise left the FPMT Board of Directors.

In December 2012 he released his film Being Your True Nature.

Personal development
After attaining his majority, formulaic greetings regularly appeared in FPMT publications. In May 2009, Hita gave an interview for Babylon Magazine, a bilingual (Spanish/English) Madrid periodical. In it he expressed belief in reincarnation, and admiration for Lama Zopa and the Dalai Lama, while complaining of discomfort with his exile Tibetan environs:

"I returned to Spain because I had arrived at a point where I no longer fitted within that life. I couldn't find myself, because for me it was a lie being there living something that was imposed from outside."

Having left Sera monastery at eighteen, without going on for the geshe degree, he felt unqualified to teach, as the FPMT expected of him: "The literal translation of lama is teacher, and I'm no teacher."

Similar, but more pointed, remarks soon appeared in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo:

"Con 14 meses ya me habían reconocido y llevado a la India. Me vistieron con un gorro amarillo, me sentaron en un trono, la gente me veneraba... Me sacaron de mi familia y me metieron en una situación medieval en la que he sufrido muchísimo. Era como vivir en una mentira."

"At 14 months I was recognized and taken to India. They dressed me in a yellow hat, they sat me on a throne, people worshipped me ... They took me away from my family and put me in a medieval situation in which I suffered a lot. It was like living a lie."

In a video posted on YouTube in December 2018, on 27 December 2018 he gave a two-part, 3-hour long talk to students at the FPMT-affiliated Tibetan Buddhist Centre, Institut Vajra Yogini, at Lavaur, near Toulouse, France.

In November 2019, Hita showed his commitment to supporting the UK Daily Mirror's "Million Trees" Campaign, along with the 14th Dalai Lama and Hollywood legend Richard Gere. Tree planting has always been one of Osel’s passions and dreams. In January 2020, Osel formally launched the Global Tree Initiative through a WhatsApp chat group. People from around the world joined and various committees were established to handle different tasks. The goal was set to collect 100,000 tree plantings to offer to the Dalai Lama on July 6, 2020, to celebrate his 85th birthday.

Documentaries
A documentary about Hita's life, called The Reluctant Lama, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 28 September 2012. The documentary was produced by Beth O'Dea and presented by Jolyon Jenkins.

A documentary series about Hita's life, called Osel, was released on HBO Max in 2022.

title: Tenzin Ösel Hita


text:
Rugby league in Australia

Rugby league in Australia has been one of Australia's most popular sports since it started being played there in 1908. It is the dominant winter football code in the states of New South Wales and Queensland. In 2022, it was the most watched sport on Australian television with an aggregate audience of 137.3 million viewers. The premier club competition is the National Rugby League (NRL), which features ten teams from New South Wales, four teams from Queensland, and one team each from Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The premier representative competition is the annual Rugby league State of Origin featuring two sides, the New South Wales Blues and the Queensland Maroons is often referred to as "Australian sport's greatest rivalry",   it is one of Australia's premier sporting events, attracting huge interest and television audiences.

Australia has a rich history of rugby league, first taking up the sport in 1908 alongside people in Britain and New Zealand. The country has been dominant over the other rugby league-playing nations for many years, but enjoys a strong rivalry with New Zealand.

Commonly known as "league" or "football", and sometimes referred to as "the greatest game of all", it is traditionally seen as a "working man's sport" with its roots in the working class communities of Northern England, compared to rugby union which has its roots in prestigious English public schools. The governing body in Australia is the Australian Rugby League Commission.

20th Century
By the time England's new "Northern Union game" arrived in Australia it was fundamentally different from that of the Southern Rugby Union, with lineouts, rucks and two players from each team having already been removed, and the play-the-ball introduced to improve the game's flow. A similar schism to that which occurred in England, and for similar reasons, opened up in the rugby union establishment of Australia, seeing the term "rugby league" first used for the new game as in the rest of the world, in 1907 at the instigation of the famous test cricketer Victor Trumper. At a meeting in Bateman's Crystal Hotel in Sydney, New South Wales, the New South Wales Rugby Football League (NSWRFL) was formed as a professional organisation. Players were immediately recruited for the new game, and despite the threat of immediate and lifetime expulsion from the rugby union, the NSWRFL managed to recruit Herbert "Dally" Messenger, the most famous rugby footballer in Sydney at that time. The visit by James Giltinan, Harry Hoyle, and Victor Trumper on Sunday 11 August 1907 to gain the agreement of Dally Messenger's mother, Annie Messenger, for him to switch to the new code is part of Rugby League folklore.

Rugby league then went on to displace rugby union as the primary football code in New South Wales. Four matches were played in Sydney on the New South Wales Rugby Football League's "Foundation Day" on 20 April 1908 (Easter Monday) in two double headers. At Wentworth Park in Sydney's Glebe, Easts beat Newtown before Glebe triumphed over Newcastle while at Birchgrove Oval in Balmain, South Sydney beat North Sydney and Balmain beat Wests. On 8 May 1909 the first match of rugby league was played in Brisbane. Past Grammars played against Souths before a handful of spectators at the Gabba.

The Newcastle Rugby League was founded in 1910 with four clubs, Central Newcastle, Northern Suburbs, South Newcastle and Western Suburbs. The Illawarra Rugby League was founded in 1911 with five clubs (Dapto, Helensburgh, Mount Keira, Unanderra and Wollongong). In 1911, a Goldfields' League was formed in West Wyalong, and games were played in Tamworth, Aberdeen, and along the South Coast. The game was introduced to Orange in 1912 and spread quickly through the western districts. In 1913 branch leagues were formed at Bathurst, Dubbo, Nowra, and Tamworth. In 1914 and 1915 an amalgamation of rugby league and Australian rules football was considered and trialled.

The 1920 Great Britain Lions tour saw a record attendance for any sport at the Sydney Cricket Ground as Australia won the Ashes for the first time on home soil. In 1921 approximately 30,000 people watched a women's rugby league game in Sydney. This set a long-standing record for the highest attendance at a women's sporting competition outside the Olympic or Commonwealth games.

The attendance record for a rugby league match in Australia was broken in 1932 when 70,204 people saw Australia play England at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

The 50th anniversary of rugby league in Australia was marked by hosting the second ever Rugby League World Cup tournament in 1957.

The attendance record for a rugby league match was re-set by the 1965 NSWRFL season's Grand Final between St. George and South Sydney attracting a crowd of 78,065. The 1967 NSWRFL season's grand final became the first football grand final of any code to be televised live in Australia. The Nine Network had paid $5,000 for the broadcasting rights.

Arthur Beetson became the first indigenous Australian to captain the national team of any sport when in 1973 he was selected to lead the Kangaroos. Also that year NSWRFL boss Kevin Humphreys negotiated rugby league's first television deal with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In 1976 Eastern Suburbs became the first rugby league team, and one of the first in Australian sport, to sport a sponsor's name on their jersey.

The NSWRFL Premiership spread outside Sydney in 1982 with the introduction of the Illawarra Steelers and Canberra Raiders. In 1986, Brisbane Rugby League player Bob Lindner was the last to be selected from a non-NSWRL club to debut for the Australian national team. 1987 was the last year that a state of Origin player was selected from a non-NSWRL club. In 1988 the NSWRL's first teams from outside the borders of New South Wales were added: the Brisbane Broncos and Gold Coast Giants.

In 1993 the Australian Women's Rugby League was formed. The 1993 Winfield Cup Grand Final drew remarkably strong ratings nationwide. The second game of the 1994 State of Origin series was brought south to the Melbourne Cricket Ground and re-set the nation's rugby league attendance record with 87,161. This success had set the scene for a truly national competition which eventuated in 1995 with the addition of teams from Townsville, Perth and even Auckland in New Zealand. However the growth of the competition was severely hampered by one of the biggest corporate disputes in Australian history over control of it: the Super League war. The Super League war was fought in and out of court during the mid-1990s by the News Ltd-backed Super League and Kerry Packer-backed Australian Rugby League organisations over control of the top-level professional rugby league football competition of Australasia. In 1995, New South Wales State of Origin and Kangaroos Test forward Ian Roberts became the first high-profile Australian sports person and first footballer in the world to come out to the public as gay. 1997 was unique in Australian rugby league's history as it was split into two separate competitions: the 1997 ARL season and the 1997 Super League season. The following season the premiership was re-united under the National Rugby League partnership committee, composed of representatives from Australian Rugby League and News Ltd.

21st Century
In 2008, the centenary year of rugby league in Australia was celebrated, with 2008 World Cup being held and the Royal Australian Mint launching a series of uncirculated coins in November 2007 to commemorate the occasion. The percentage of indigenous players in top-level rugby league premiership was reported to have fallen from 21% in the 1990s to 11% in 2009. In 2009, rugby league's popularity in Australia was confirmed as it had the highest television ratings of any sport. This occurred again in 2010, with an increased number of people watching Rugby League (120 million) compared to AFL (112 million). This is a season when an unprecedented scandal took place: the Melbourne Storm was found to have conducted four systematic breaches of the competition's salary cap, and had all honours gained over the previous years (including 2 premierships) nullified, were forced to pay large fines and shed enough star players to get back under the cap, all while playing the rest of the season already guaranteed the wooden spoon.

2012 saw a major re-structure of the administration of rugby league in Australia. The newly formed independent Australian Rugby League Commission took over control of the National Rugby League premiership, the State of Origin series and the Australian national team.

A 2013 report found that behind cricket, rugby league was Australia's second-most popular sport. The same year a report conducted by Brand Finance valued the Penrith Panthers club at $46.2m, the highest of any Australian sporting brand, while the Brisbane Broncos had the highest brand equity.

Polling conducted by Roy Morgan Research indicated that in 2014 the NRL was second only to the AFL in terms of football television viewship. In 2018, the NRL superseded the AFL's television viewership by over five million viewers.

Federal governing body
The Australian Rugby League Commission is the governing body for the sport of rugby league in Australia and also conducts all representative rugby league, including the national team and the annual State of Origin series. The Australian Rugby League's major club competition is the National Rugby League.

State based governing bodies
At state level, the game is administered by local governing bodies under the control of the ARLC. The state bodies include the New South Wales Rugby League and Queensland Rugby League, as well as Northern Territory Rugby League, South Australian Rugby League, Tasmanian Rugby League, Victorian Rugby League and Western Australia Rugby League which have Affiliate state status.

New South Wales has a second governing body, the New South Wales Country Rugby League (NSWCRL) to govern the sport outside the Sydney metropolitan area. In spite of its name, NSWCRL also governs rugby league in the Australian Capital Territory. However, the NSWRL absorbed the CRL in 2019.

Club competitions

The elite professional rugby league club competition in Australia is the National Rugby League (NRL). The NRL's Telstra Premiership is contested by 4 teams from Queensland, 10 from New South Wales, 1 from Victoria and 1 from the Australian Capital Territory as well as 1 team from New Zealand. Formerly, 16 of these teams also fielded National Youth Competition teams, an Under 20s competition that ceased in 2017. This was replaced by the Jersey Flegg Cup and the Hastings Deering Colts, locally-administrated state-based competitions for New South Wales and Queensland respectively.

Underneath the NRL, semi-professional competitions such as the Hostplus Cup, Knock-On Effect NSW Cup and Ron Massey Cup are run in both New South Wales and Queensland. These competitions are the major feeder competitions for the NRL competition. Alongside these mainly metropolitan-based competitions country rugby league bodies run competitions throughout rural Queensland and New South Wales. Amateur competitions are run in the Affiliated states.

Attendances
Rugby league attendances saw their previously best year in 1995 (the year before Australia's Super League War, with total attendances reaching 3,061,893. Six clubs averaged over 20,000 in that year, a feat still unmatched. This was a large increase on the previous years and was no doubt due to the formation of several new clubs and the renaming of the competition, from the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) to the Australian Rugby league (ARL).

The year of 1996 was a turbulent one for Australian rugby league and saw what may be the largest decrease in attendance ever (2,450,776, down 611,117 down from 1995) in the ARL. This crowd decrease is attributed to the poor publicity surrounding the ongoing court cases related to the Super League War. When the Super League competition was introduced in 1997 and played alongside the ARL competition it attracted 1,111,189. The ARL for the same year saw slightly higher attendances of 1,308,824. Subsequent years of 1998, in which the merger of the SL and ARL formed the National Rugby League (NRL) and 1999 also saw increases.

The year 2000 saw club mergers and "relegations" from the NRL. The effective slashing of clubs from the first grade rugby league competition was reflected in the slashing of crowd figures as fans became disgruntled by the club they had supported for many years being torn apart.

Crowd figures did not improve until 2003, with an increase of 249,317 on the previous year, 2002. Figures increased again in 2004 and 2005. The aggregate crowd for 2005 was 2,964,288 and the average crowd figure for regular season matches was 16,468, the highest ever recorded, and 34,710 for play-offs. In 2006, attendance slightly dipped to 2,808,235. An average of 15,601 for regular season matches and 34,163 for playoffs, which was still an improvement on 2004 figures.

In 2007, the number of teams competing in first grade rugby league in Australia increased for the first time since 2002 with the re-introduction of the Gold Coast Titans in Gold Coast, Queensland.(Statistics do not include finals)

In 2010 Rugby League recorded its best year ever in Australia, setting a new all-time total season attendance record of 3,490,778 spectators — and with four less teams than in 1995.

Representative competitions
The State of Origin series is an annual best-of-three series of interstate matches between the two strongest rugby league states Queensland and New South Wales. The State of Origin series is one of Australia's premier sporting events, attracting a huge television audience and usually selling out the stadiums in which the games are played. From 2012–2021, an Under 20s State of Origin match was held annually on the same weekend as the Australia vs New Zealand test. This has now been changed to Under 19s.

Women's State of Origin has been held since 1999, and in 2021 an Under 19s Women's series was introduced.

City vs Country Origin is an annual Australian rugby league match that takes place in New South Wales between teams made up of NRL players representing 'City' (Sydney metropolitan area) and 'Country' (all areas in NSW outside the Sydney metropolitan area).

The Affiliated States Championship is an annual competition involving four affiliated states (Victoria, South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia) plus representative sides from the Australian Police and Australian Defence Force.

Total participation
In an interview for a Sydney Morning Herald article in 2021, Chairman of the Australian Rugby League Commission, Peter V'landys, revealed yearly rugby league participation figures from 2015 to 2021. These participation figures show that national participation in 2019 (the last year before COVID-19 disruption) for males was 147,723 of whom 83,400 were located in New South Wales. National participation figures in 2019 for females was 14,958 with 7,108 were located in New South Wales. By the time of the article in 2021, national participation figures for males had declined to 143,792 while national participation for females had increased to 16,899.

In 2021, a total of 30,648 students in metropolitan, regional and remote Australia from 354 schools participated in rugby league. The NRL 2008 Annual report included significantly higher school participation figures suggesting either a substantial decline of 89% or a more generous definition was applied when measuring participants historically.

Women in rugby league
The vast majority of rugby league participants are male. Of the 172,000 participants in 2004, 5% were female.

National participation figures released in 2021 show female participants number 16,899 accounting for 10.52% of the total national participation number of 160,691.

The Australian Women's Rugby League was formed in 1993, which only achieved affiliation with the Australian Rugby League in 1998. This is in contrast to the men's competition which has existed since 1908.

The lack of female-participation in Australian rugby league can mostly be attributed to the predominantly masculine culture which discourages women from playing, and provides little financial or cultural incentive to play.

Despite this, a women's rugby league match in Sydney in 1921 attracted around 30,000 spectators.

Females account for a large percentage of rugby league's viewing public and the attraction of the game for women partly accounts for rugby league's very strong position in the Australian sporting landscape. Many NRL clubs hold initiatives to foster this relationship. For instance, in 2005 the Canterbury Bulldogs staged a luncheon for 300 of Sydney's corporate women to raise funds for the National Breast Cancer Foundation, as well as skills development for school girls within the Canterbury-Bankstown district. This follows the increased number of female members to the boards of the National Rugby League and several of its clubs. Manly Sea Eagles also instituted several female directed initiatives, some of which were aimed towards further increasing female spectator numbers.

Not all the perceptions of rugby league being a mostly man game are completely true. At a junior and local level there are many women involved in volunteering positions. Women form a very important part of the local club structures. However, it is not customary for women over the age of 11 to continue playing rugby league against the boys and the exclusively women's rugby league clubs have a relatively small profile in comparison to the local boys' clubs.

Rugby league became the first mainstream professional sport in Australia to appoint a female director to a governing body, with Katie Page, the managing director of retail giant Harvey Norman, accepting an invitation to join the National Rugby League's executive board.

In 2009 the Australian National Women's rugby league side (Jillaroos) defeated the 2008 Women's Rugby League World Champions New Zealand, in Auckland, ending a ten-year streak of successive defeats at the hands of the New Zealand team.

Junior participation
An analysis of 2001 New South Wales Child Health Survey by the University of New South Wales has shown that 23.2% of parents are likely to discourage their son from playing rugby league. In contrast, the next most discouraged sport was rugby union, with only 7.5% of parents willing to discourage the sport. This is despite recent research by Medibank annually since 2003 that puts other sports in Australia, such as Australian Rules Football and soccer as producing more major injuries.

The injury rates and the public perception of rugby league as a dangerous sport are most likely the catalysts for the introduction of several initiatives by the national rugby league and ARL development in recent years to curb the number of youth playing other sports. The specific initiatives over the years includes a Safe play code, Kids to kangaroos programmes and new forms of modified rugby league, such as, Mod league and Mini Footy to help young children prepare for the full rigours of the international code. Also with such introductions are the competitions aimed at school children such as Joey league, League of legends and League Sevens, which use modified rugby league rules such as Tag and Sevens.

Whilst previous announcements in annual reports have claimed junior registrations as high as 120,667 and up to 1,000,000 children engaged in "rugby-league based physical activities in 2008" (which would equate to roughly 1/3 of all primary and secondary children nationwide in that year ), more recent reports have identified far lower participation numbers of 160,691 total registrations and 30,648 students nationwide.

Senior participation
In 2008, 51,540 people participated in senior rugby league. Participation numbers amongst senior divisions tend to decline in higher age groups. While this can be expected to the nature of a physical sport, overall rugby league senior numbers have declined since the early 1990s. The ARL attributes this to game becoming more physically demanding and the increasing pressure to sustain semi-professional clubs and teams. At the same time, however, it notes that "rugby league is, generally, missing a recreational game that keeps people playing the sport when they drop out of the so-called elite stream". To combat this, the ARL is investing programs, modified rules and gala days to increase senior participation such as the ARL Masters Carnival.

Location
Rugby league is by far the largest and most popular sport in New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory (which constitute 55% of the population of Australia). In these states, NRL viewership figures far outweigh those of any other sport, and crowd figures are ahead of those of Cricket and the AFL, the next largest sports in terms of attendance.

New South Wales and Queensland account for the majority of rugby league participation numbers. However, per capita figures show that Queensland and the Northern Territory rate ahead of New South Wales participation figures, making Queensland and the Northern Territory the largest participators per capita of rugby league in Australia.

Rugby league enjoys lower participation in other states of Australia due to competition with Australia's other premier football code Australian rules football, and the high junior level participation rates of other sports such as soccer and basketball. Victoria and Western Australia have roughly an equal number of participants with Western Australia higher per capita. The establishment of the Melbourne Storm has seen Victoria experience growth in player counts, especially in school based rugby league participation which registered 9,023 participants in 2022. South Australia has the lowest participation levels for mainland Australia and Tasmania has, by far, the least participants for rugby league in the entire nation.

Variants
Three main variant sports of rugby league are played in Australia; Touch, OzTag, and League tag. As can be seen above, total rugby league participation including Variants is well over 1.5 million (1 million touch alone).

Touch
Touch (also known as touch football or touch rugby) is a variant of rugby league that is conducted under the direction of the Federation of International Touch (FIT). Though it shares similarities and history with rugby league, it is recognised as a sport in its own right due to its differences which have been developed over the sport's lifetime.

Touch is a variation of rugby league with the tackling of opposing players replaced by a touch. As touches must be made with minimal force, touch is therefore considered a limited-contact sport. The original basic rules of touch were established in the 1960s by members of the South Sydney Junior Rugby League Club in Sydney, Australia.

The sport is governed in Australia by Touch Football Australia in partnership with the NRL, and is played by over 1 million people nationwide. Top level competitions include the NRL Touch Premiership and the National Touch League.

OzTag
OzTag is a non-contact form of rugby league, and can be seen as a variation of British tag rugby. Cronulla Sharks and St George Dragons halfback Perry Haddock introduced the sport in Australia while coaching the 1992 St George Jersey Flegg side. Together with Chris Parkes, the two took the sport to fields across Australia. Today, it is played by over 200,000 players in organised leagues across the country.

League Tag
League Tag replaces tackling with the removal of one of two tags carried on an opponent's hips, attached directly to specific League Tag shorts with Velcro patches, but otherwise retains almost all other rules of traditional rugby league (such as kicking). A number of additional rules are also added relating to the specific issues associated with a tag based game.

League Tag is the primary female version of rugby league administered by the Country Rugby League. The NSWRL continues to administer the game across the state post the NSWRL-CRL merger in 2019.

The national team
The Australian national rugby league team represents Australia at rugby league. Since 7 July 1994 the team's nickname has been the Kangaroos. Prior to that the Australian team was only referred to as the Kangaroos when on tours of Great Britain and/or France. They are administered by the Australian Rugby League and have been the most dominant national side over the past few decades.

In popular culture
Rugby league has been described as "an iconic Australian sport" and has therefore featured prominently in Australian popular culture. Famous Australian writers throughout history such as Banjo Paterson, Thomas Keneally and Kenneth Slessor have produced literature about the game.

Media coverage
Due to the widespread interest in rugby league games played, including the State of Origin series, match results, scorelines and reports of injuries to key players, are comprehensively carried by many Australian newspapers. These include the major national daily newspapers; in general match results and reports are published on the weekend of the game and on Mondays, and commentary continues throughout the week, with rugby league-related stories usually to be found in the sporting section of the major newspapers every week-day.

All premiership games are broadcast on television, either free-to-air or cable. Online, the ABC, as well as major newsgroups provide articles on Rugby League, bylined in general by a reporter who is exclusively a sports correspondent. Interest in rugby league is highest in New South Wales and Queensland; as well, many of the large number of Australian expatriates living and working overseas are avidly interested in the season's games, and are able to ensure that they are kept up-to-date by accessing on-line versions of stories provided by major media organisations. Formerly, the official publication for the NRL was Big League, however, production was suspended in 2020 due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, and hasn't been renewed since.

The 2012 State of Origin series' third and deciding game set a new record for the highest television audience in Australia for a rugby league match since the introduction of the OzTam ratings system in 2001.

A list of major newspapers which publish rugby league-related stories includes The Australian, The Courier-Mail, Daily Telegraph, The Sydney Morning Herald, Herald Sun and The Age. Matches are broadcast on both Channel 9, Foxtel and in New Zealand by Sky TV.

ABC radio's Grandstand programme broadcasts live rugby league games on the weekends. Sydney radio station, 2GB, also broadcasts live NRL matches Friday to Sunday (with their Continuous Call Team).

Rugby league was the biggest television sport in Australia in 2022.

title: Rugby league in Australia


text:
City of Industry (disambiguation)

City of Industry is a city in Los Angeles County, California.

City of Industry may also refer to:

 * City of Industry (film), a 1997 crime film directed by John Irvin
 * City of Industry (car), a name of two gassers in the 1950s and '60s

title: City of Industry (disambiguation)


text:
User:Matani2005~enwiki/welcome

Welcome!

 * Hi,, Welcome to Wikipedia!

I hope you like this place--I sure do--and want to stay. If you need help on how to title new articles check out Naming conventions, and for help on formatting the pages visit the manual of style. If you need help look at Help and The FAQ, plus if you can't find your answer there, check The Village pump (for Wikipedia related questions) or The Reference Desk (for general questions)! There's still more help at the Tutorial and Policy Library. Plus, don't forget to visit the Community Portal. And if you have any more questions after that, feel free to post them on My User talk Page. Additional Tips:

Here's some extra tips to help you get around in the 'pedia!
 * If you made any edits before you got an account, you might be interested in assigning those to your username.
 * If you want to play around with your new Wiki skills the Sandbox is for you.
 * You can sign your name using three tildes, like &#126&#126~. If you use four, you can add a datestamp too.
 * If you ever think a page or image should be deleted, please list it at the votes for deletion page. There is also a votes for undeletion page if you want to retrieve something that you think should not have been deleted.

Matani2005  Talk05:57, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

title: User:Matani2005~enwiki/welcome


text:
Rugby league in New Zealand

Rugby league in New Zealand dates to the beginning of the sport in England. New Zealand played an integral role in the history of rugby league football. Of all rugby league nations New Zealand was second only to England to compete in international competition.

History
A professional New Zealand team was touring England and Australia before it was even considered that there should be a professional league in New Zealand. The first makings of a New Zealand rugby football schism, such as seen in other countries was the creation of Albert Henry Baskerville who set out to sign a group of professional rugby players to tour England. Baskerville's team of professional "All Golds", on their way to England, made a stop over in Australia, playing a 3-game series against a professional New South Wales rugby team. From there, they went on to England and for the first time, played by the Rugby Football League's rules. On their return home, they stopped over in Australia to play another 10 games against clubs from the newly formed New South Wales Rugby League. During the All Gold's tour, their founder, Baskerville fell ill and later died of pneumonia. 13 June 1908 saw the first game of rugby league played by the Northern Union's new rules on New Zealand soil; as a benefit match for Baskerville's widowed mother. The first match in New Zealand was played at Wellington on 13 June 1908 before a crowd of nearly 7,000, which saw an exhibition between two teams drawn from the touring side. Rugby league had now its sights firmly set on New Zealand, however, the New Zealand Rugby Union's dominance in New Zealand sport, government and business would prove a lot tougher than the unions of Australia or England. The NZRU took it upon themselves to pressure potential converts, officials, sponsors and ground owners into not giving the rugby league upstarts any room to move. The Wellington Rugby Union even went to the length of naming, under false pretenses, famous players in the team lineup for a match at Athletic Park in order to lure interest away from a Northern Union match being played in Petone on the same day. None of this succeeded in stopping the establishment of the game and by 1910 it was being played in Auckland, Taranaki, Rotorua, Nelson, Southland, Wanganui, Marlborough, Invercargill, Hawke's Bay, and South Auckland. The New Zealand Rugby League was formed in 1909 and other provinces joined the league. In the year after that, Auckland Rugby League became the first to start a regular competition. The Auckland League had a full season in 1912, with its headquarters at Eden Park. That same year saw the formation of Wellington's local rugby league competition. In 1913 Henry Thacker set up the Canterbury Rugby Football League, donating the Thacker Shield.

By the early 1990s New South Wales' club competition matches were being broadcast in New Zealand with far greater viewing numbers than that of domestic rugby union. A New Zealand club team, the Auckland Warriors, was added to the top-level Australian Rugby League competition in 1995. Soon after when the Australian Super League war shook the game to its very foundations in that country, the New Zealand Rugby League, along with the governing body in Britain, aligned itself with Super League. The Warriors continued to participate in the National Rugby League competition after many expansion teams were cut and foundation teams merged. In 2001 the club's name was changed to New Zealand Warriors.

In 2005, the New Zealand national side won the Tri-Nations final, beating Australia 24–0. This was the first series defeat of Australia in 25 years and also their equal biggest losing margin. The New Zealand national team won the Rugby League World Cup for the first time in 2008. In 2009, the much-mooted State of Origin-like concept called "Kiwi Roots", which would involve two domestic New Zealand representative teams playing each other, was announced to commence in 2010. but has yet to eventuate.

In 2010 a poll released by UMR Research showed that in Auckland, home of the Warriors, more people were interested in the NRL premiership (33%) than rugby union's ITM Cup (26%). The finals form of the Warriors in 2011 increased the NRL's television audience in New Zealand by 29 per cent that year.

Governing body
The New Zealand Rugby League is responsible for governing of rugby league in New Zealand. The Auckland Rugby League is a partner of the NZRL and is responsible for the governing the sport in the Auckland Region. The premier competition organised by the governing body of rugby league in New Zealand is the National Competition, formed in 2010. Significant former competitions included the Lion Red Cup, run from 1994–96, the Bartercard Cup, run from 2000–07, and the Bartercard Premiership, run from 2008–09.

On a regional level, the sport is administered by seven zones and fifteen districts and has seven Affiliates.

Zones
 * Rugby League Northland (Northern Swords)
 * Akarana (Akarana Falcons)
 * Counties Manukau (Counties Manukau Stingrays)
 * Upper Central (Wai-Coa-Bay Stallions)
 * Mid Central (Central Vipers)
 * Wellington (Wellington Orcas)
 * Southern (Canterbury Bulls)

Districts
 * Auckland Rugby League
 * Aoraki Rugby League
 * Bay of Plenty Rugby League
 * Canterbury Rugby League
 * Coastline Rugby League
 * Gisborne Tairawhiti Rugby League
 * Manawatu Rugby League
 * Otago Rugby League
 * Southland Rugby League
 * Rugby League Hawke's Bay
 * Taranaki Rugby League
 * Tasman Rugby League
 * Waikato Rugby League
 * Wellington Rugby League
 * West Coast Rugby League
 * Whangarei City & Districts

Affiliates New Zealand based teams also take part in Australian competitions. New Zealand Warriors are the only non-Australian team in the National Rugby League and the New South Wales Cup.
 * Kiwis Association
 * Masters of Rugby League
 * Defence Forces
 * Māori Rugby League
 * Universities and Tertiary Students
 * Women's Rugby League
 * Pacific Island Rugby League

National Competition
The NZRL National Competition (previously called the "National Zonal Competition") is the top-level rugby league competition run by the New Zealand Rugby League. In 2010 the competition replaced the Bartercard Premiership following a Sparc funded review and restructure of the New Zealand Rugby League. Since 2019, the competition has consisted of a four-team national premiership and an eight-team national championship (split into North and South Island Conferences) with a promotion and relegation between the two divisions.

Teams playing in Australia
The National Rugby League (NRL) is Australia's top-level competition for the sport of rugby league and the New Zealand Warriors are New Zealand's only team in the NRL; in addition they have a "B team" in the NSW Cup, one of Australia's second tier state competitions. The club also fields a team in the NRL Women's Premiership. Wellington Orcas unsuccessfully bid for a National Rugby League licence in 2006. In May 2022, NRL CEO Andrew Abdo mentioned a second New Zealand team to be an option for a potential 18th NRL Team.

National team
The New Zealand national rugby league team represent New Zealand at rugby league, and are commonly known as the Kiwis, after the native bird of that name. They are administered by the New Zealand Rugby League. On 22 October 2008, The Kiwis defeated Australia to win their first Rugby League World Cup. The team's most recent title came in the 2014 Rugby League Four Nations tournament by beating Australia, which brings their Rugby League Four Nations championships total to two. The national team reached the semi-finals of the 2021 Rugby League World Cup where they were knocked out by Australia. The Kiwis are currently the number two ranked rugby league nation (as of December 2022).

title: Rugby league in New Zealand


text: User talk:81.229.114.211

title: User talk:81.229.114.211


text:
Rugby league in England

Rugby league is played across England but is most popular in Northern England, especially Yorkshire and Lancashire where the game originated. These areas are the heartland of rugby league. The sport is also popular in Cumbria where the amateur game is particularly powerful.

Name
Within its Northern heartlands, rugby league is often referred to as "rugby", a term that in the rest of England would normally refer to rugby union, and occasionally as "football", which even in the North of England normally refers to association football.

Foundations
Rugby has long been popular in the North of England and by the 1880s the region's clubs had come to dominate. The game was popular amongst working class people, unlike the clubs in Southern England whose players belonged to the middle or upper class. Rugby competition at the time did not allow paying players any wages; the working class players felt they could not afford time off to train and play, nor could they afford to miss work through injury sustained whilst playing. The principle of amateurism, and issues of class ensured that the Rugby Football Union would not countenance professional rugby.

In August 1895, representatives of the northern clubs met at the George Hotel, Huddersfield to form the "Northern Rugby Football Union" (NRFU). The NRFU was initially vehemently anti-professional, allowing only payments for time missed from other employment. A thriving amateur scene also soon developed, as local amateur clubs wished to maintain links with their "Northern Union" neighbours.

The Northern Union made reforms to the laws in 1897 and again in 1906 in an effort make the game more exciting. This resulted in Northern Union football becoming a sport in its own right rather than a form of rugby union.

The sport spread outside England and soon international matches began to be played. The first international match was played in 1904 as England was beaten 9–3 at Central Park, Wigan by "Other Nationalities" (largely Welsh players). This was followed by a tour of Britain by New Zealand in 1907. New Zealand met Great Britain in Great Britain's first ever Test match at Headingley, Leeds on 18 January 1908. The same year the first Australian Kangaroos tourists visited Britain. In 1910 the first British tour to Australia and New Zealand took place.

The Challenge Cup began in 1897 with Batley beating St Helens to win the first title. The final was first broadcast by BBC radio in 1927. The Wembley tradition was started in 1929 when Wigan beat Dewsbury 13–2 at the first Rugby League Challenge Cup to be held at Wembley.

Rugby league continued to be played throughout the 1914–15 season, however, the loss of players to the First World War, a government ban on professionalism and reduced attendances forced all major competitions to be replaced by regional competitions. The NRFU became the Rugby Football League in 1922.

The 1930s saw a series of failed attempts to introduce rugby league football to London.

During the Second World War professional rugby league was again discontinued, normal leagues were suspended, a War Emergency League was established, with clubs playing separate Yorkshire and Lancashire sections to reduce the need for travel.

Post-war
In 1948 the first televised rugby league match was played when Wigan's 8–3 Challenge Cup Final victory over Bradford Northern was broadcast to the Midlands. In another first this was the first rugby league match to be attended by the reigning monarch, King George VI, who presented the trophy.

Several attempts were made to expand the game outside the heartlands, a Southern Amateur Rugby League being formed in 1949, however only Cumberland and southern areas of the West Riding of Yorkshire proved receptive with teams being founded in Workington, Whitehaven and Doncaster. Nonetheless the game survived, and continued to maintain popularity in its home regions. The introduction of regular internationals as other countries took up the sport provided a fillip.

Rugby league experienced a surge in interest following the end of the Second World War. Large crowds came to be the norm for a period of around 20 years. The total crowds for the British season hit a record in 1949–50, when over 69.8 million paying customers attended all matches. The 1953–54 Challenge Cup Final replay between Halifax and Warrington, held at Odsal Stadium, Bradford, drew 102,575 paying spectators with an estimated 20,000 others getting in free after a section of fencing collapsed.

The boom had begun to subside by the early 1960s; rugby league now had to compete against television and other new forms of entertainment and attendances began to fall. David Attenborough, then controller of BBC2, made the decision to screen games from a new competition the BBC2 Floodlit Trophy in 1965. It proved a success, and rugby league has featured on television ever since.

Attendances fell even further in the 1970s. Britain won the Ashes for the last time in 1970, with a 2–1 series win in Australia.

The foundation of the Universities and Colleges Rugby League in 1969 and the British Amateur Rugby League Association in 1973 was a response to the need to develop the game below professional level.

1980–1990
In 1980, Fulham F.C. formed a rugby league team, with the intention of creating another income stream for the association football club. The Rugby Football League was keen to expand outside the heartlands and accepted the new club (now known as London Broncos). This was not the first rugby league club to be based in London — three London-based clubs had come and gone in the 1930s — but unlike past ventures the new team survived despite several moves and name changes, and are now London Broncos.

The 1982 Kangaroos won all their tour games for first time ever, and became known as "The Invincibles". This was the time when the gap between English and Australian rugby league became apparent and has never been fully closed.

The All-Party Parliamentary Rugby League Group was formed in 1987 to support the sport of rugby league and tackle the key issues facing the game in Parliament. Ian McCartney MP was the first chairman and David Hinchliffe MP the secretary. In 1987 a "free gangway" between the two codes of rugby at amateur level was introduced but individual cases of discrimination continued, resulting in the Sports (Discrimination) Bill, which was introduced by David Hinchcliffe in 1994.

In the mid 1980s Wigan began an era of domination of English rugby league that would end only with the formation of Super League. By 1995 they had won the Challenge Cup a record eight consecutive times and the league title for a record seven consecutive times.

The traditional Origin series between Yorkshire and Lancashire was abandoned in 1989. Although the matches had provided a good test for selecting players for the full England and Great Britain sides, the crowds had been poor and the games had little attraction for the rest of the country. The series was revived again in 2001 before being abandoned in 2003.

The Combined Services Rugby League (CSRL) was formed in 1994 after the official recognition of rugby league by the armed services, since then rugby league has been the fastest growing army sport. The rival code rugby union went professional in 1995 and, as a result, other restrictions on rugby league were relaxed by the Rugby Football Union. This opened up the possibility of expanding the game into areas where it had never been played before as it allowed rugby league clubs to groundshare with rugby union clubs and for union players to try out the other code without fear of persecution.

1995–present: Summer era

In 1995, the fallout from the Super League war hit Britain, and the game underwent massive re-organisation. A new elite league, Super League was formed, and the sport switched from a winter to a summer season. Super League has largely been a success as the value of its TV contract and top tier game crowd attendances and have both grown year upon year since 2001.

The Rugby League Conference was founded in 1998 with the aim of providing regular fixtures for new clubs based outside the 'heartland' of rugby league. It began with fourteen teams, but within nine years had grown to eighty-eight clubs spread throughout England and the rest of Britain.

Rugby Football League
The Rugby Football League (RFL) is the governing body for the sport in England. Previously, before the emergence of Wales Rugby League, Scotland Rugby League and Rugby League Ireland the RFL had control over the whole United Kingdom.

The RFL are affiliated with International Rugby League (IRL) and European Rugby League (ERL). The Community Board is made up of representatives of the RFL, BARLA, Combined Services, English Schools Rugby League and Student Rugby League.

British Amateur Rugby League Association
British Amateur Rugby League Association (BARLA) are responsible for amateur rugby league chiefly in the sport's north of England heartlands. Though many Rugby League Conference teams are affiliated to BARLA, the Conference itself is not a BARLA organisation. The top division under their control is the National Conference League, with regional leagues including the North West Counties and Pennine leagues. BARLA selects an international team consisting of amateur players, the BARLA Lions. This team tours many parts of the rugby league world, and have competed in the Rugby League Emerging Nations Tournament.

Armed Forces
Rugby league was recognised as a military sport in 1994. The Combined Services Rugby League (CSRL) is the co-ordinating group for the Army Rugby League, Royal Navy Rugby League and the Royal Air Force Rugby League. Each constituent body organises its own competitions at unit and formation level. Players are fed into representative teams to represent each of the services, and the best players are selected to represent the Combined Services.

Women's Amateur Rugby League Association
The Women's Amateur Rugby League Association (WARLA) is the governing body of female rugby league in the United Kingdom; it currently falls under the Rugby Football League association which oversees its running and management. It was originally established in 1985 and was recognised by the RFL in its first year.

Touch Rugby
In December 2021, the RFL agreed a new partnership with the England Touch Association, the national governing body for touch rugby.

The two bodies aim to work closely together in a formal relationship in 2022, when England will host the delayed European Touch Championships in Nottingham.

Tag Rugby
The RFL is the governing body of Try Tag Rugby, which delivers mixed, men’s and women’s leagues for adults across the country.

Super League
Super League is the top league for the game in Europe; eleven of the twelve teams are based in England. It is the only full-time professional rugby league competition operating in the Northern Hemisphere. The French team Paris Saint-Germain competed in the first Super League season but folded in 1999. French presence was re-established in 2006 when Catalans Dragons were admitted to Super League. In 2009, Super League added Celtic Crusaders from Wales, which renamed themselves Crusaders Rugby League after that season; that team effectively folded after the 2011 season. The winner of the league is awarded the League Leaders' Shield whilst the overall winner of Super League is determined by play-offs and a grand final.

The winner of the Super League plays the winner of the Australian NRL competition in the World Club Challenge.

Championship and League 1
Below Super League, there are the Championship and League 1. The Championship currently has 14 clubs and League 1 has 11. The 2015 season marked the return of a promotion and relegation system between Super League and the Championship; from 2009 through to 2014 promotion between the Championship and Super League had been on a licensed, or franchised, basis. Promotion and relegation between the leagues now known as the Championship and League 1 has long existed, including during the 2009–14 period.

Following the 2014 season, the professional leagues underwent a major reorganisation. Super League and the Championship were both reduced from 14 clubs to 12, and League 1 was expanded from nine clubs to 14. The season structures of both Super League and the Championship were radically changed, and that of League 1 was more modestly changed.

Wales became represented in the Championships starting in 2010 with the entry of South Wales Scorpions into League 1 and North Wales Crusaders in 2012. Toulouse Olympique of France played in the Championship in the past, and returned to the British league system in 2016, initially playing in League 1 and now in the Championship. The Toronto Wolfpack from Canada joined League 1 in 2017 and won the title in its inaugural season, thereby earning promotion to the Championship for 2018. All other clubs in both divisions are based in England, and of these, only London Broncos of the Championship and Newcastle Thunder, London Skolars, Gloucestershire All Golds, Hemel Stags, Coventry Bears and Oxford Rugby League of League 1 are based outside the heartlands.

Challenge Cup
The Rugby League Challenge Cup remains as a knock-out competition, though entry has now been expanded to make it a pan-European tournament bringing in teams from France, Canada and the rest of the UK; Russian teams have previously featured. Amateur teams also have the chance to participate in the Challenge Cup and have been victorious over several Championship sides.

National Conference League
BARLA administer different amateur competitions which traditionally ran throughout the winter in the heartlands but have mostly switched over to a summer season. The leading competition is the National Conference League which consists of four divisions (Premier Division, Division One, Division Two and Division Three) of up to 14 teams each. Other major amateur leagues include the Yorkshire Men's League, North West Men's League, Pennine League, Cumberland League, Barrow & District League and the Hull & District League. Teams from these regional leagues can apply for election to the National Conference League if they meet minimum criteria.

The Rugby League Conference, which ran until 2011, was mostly composed of teams outside the heartlands. It has subsequently been replaced by a series of regional leagues across England, Scotland and Wales. Successor leagues in England include: Conference League South, Midlands Rugby League, North East Rugby League, South West Rugby League, East Men's League, South Premier, London & South East Men's League.

Defunct competitions
At various times English clubs have either competed in a national Championship with a Second Division and sometimes a Third Division as well or had separate county leagues for Yorkshire and Lancashire.

There were also county cups for Yorkshire and Lancashire between 1905 and 1993. The Regal Trophy and BBC2 Floodlit Trophy were two other knock-out tournaments. A Trans-Pennine Cup was played for a short-time but it was replaced by the National League Cup.

The Rugby League Charity Shield was a one-off match at the beginning of each season between 1985 and 1995. It was contested by the Champions and the holders of the Challenge Cup.

The rugby union county championship was continued as a rugby league County Championship after the 1895 great schism. Teams representing Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumberland / Cumbria and sometimes Cheshire and Northumberland & Durham took part in the championship. This continued as the Rugby League War of the Roses played between Yorkshire and Lancashire.

The Championship Cup was a cup competition for the Championship and Championship 1 (now League 1).

England
On 5 April 1904, England played their first game, losing 9–3 to Other Nationalities in a 12-a-side match at Wigan. With the exception of 1975, England was represented by Great Britain in international tournaments, but since 1995 has competed as a standalone nation. Unlike Great Britain, an England side has never won the World Cup, and non-World Cup matches involving England were not deemed to have Test status, which applied only to the full Great Britain side.

Outside of the World Cup, England are one of three automatic qualifiers to the Rugby League Four Nations, alongside New Zealand and Australia, finishing as losing finalists at the inaugural tournament in 2009. Regular tests against France have seen England go undefeated since 1981, with an International Origin series occasionally played against overseas players based in the Super League to provide stronger competition.

Between 1935 and 2004 England competed in the European Nations Cup. In recent years they had come to dominate this tournament, and in 2005 they withdrew to level the playing field, with a return planned for 2023.

In the reduced formats of the game, England took part in the defunct Rugby League World Sevens in 2002 and 2003, losing in the latter final to Parramatta Eels. The 2019 Rugby League World Cup 9s saw England reach the semi-final, losing to New Zealand at Bankwest Stadium, Sydney.

A developmental England Knights team has been selected since 2002. Previously known as England A, the Knights consist of promising players who miss out on selection to the senior squad. An England Lionhearts squad is selected from the Rugby League Conference, competing annually with the other home nations in the Amateur Four Nations, as well as fixtures against other nations.

Great Britain
The Great Britain side is also referred to as "the Lions" or "the British Lions". At international level the Women's Great Britain side is commonly referred to as the Great Britain Lionesses.

England historically provided the vast majority of players for the Great Britain team, one of the major national teams playing rugby league. They compete against Australia for the Ashes, and New Zealand for the Baskerville Shield.

The first Great Britain match took place on 18 January 1908 when they beat New Zealand 14–6 at Headingley. Apart from the 1975 tournament, Great Britain took part in the Rugby League World Cup from its inception in 1954 until 1992, winning the tournament on three occasions: 1954, 1960 and 1972.

Great Britain also played in the Rugby League Tri-Nations until 2006 against New Zealand and Australia. Although Great Britain never won the tournament, they finished top of the table in 2005, losing to Australia in the final.

In 2007 Great Britain was replaced by separate teams for each of the home nations, returning only for a 2019 tour of New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Two losses against the Kiwis in Auckland and Christchurch were book-ended by defeats against Tonga in Hamilton and Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby The whitewash attracted criticism from the British rugby league press, with the future viability of the team called into question.

Player awards
The main two awards are the Lance Todd Trophy which is awarded to the Man-of-the-Match in the Challenge Cup Final whether on the winning or losing side and the Man of Steel Award which is the annual award for the best player in Super League.

The Albert Goldthorpe Medal is an award that has been created by Rugby Leaguer & League Express to honour the leading players in Super League.

The Rugby League World Golden Boot Award is given to the international player of the year, as determined by a ballot of international rugby league writers and broadcasters. Until 2007, this was accompanied by the RLIF Awards which rewarded the best referee, coach, developing nations player, international newcomer, captain and a team of the year.

Derbies
Many of the professional teams are separated by only a few miles but not all matches between teams from the same traditional county are considered derbies. There has been some debate as to whether St. Helens versus Wigan or Bradford versus Leeds is the biggest derby in English rugby league but there is only one same city derby in the Super League – Hull F.C. v Hull Kingston Rovers.

Some of the teams involved no longer play in the same league and so derby games are either arranged as pre-season friendlies or take place as part of the Challenge Cup.

Junior rugby league
Rugby league is played at a school level in many schools in the heartlands; recently it has been introduced into some schools outside the traditional areas in particular in London and Hertfordshire.

The RFL uses two modified forms of rugby league created by ARL Development in Australia. Mini league (known as mini footy in Australia) is played by all children up to Year 4 of Primary School. It is designed to provide children with a safe environment, a firm knowledge of the laws of rugby league and a chance to practice the skills such as tackling, passing and common defensive and attacking tactics. Players up to and including Year 6 of Primary School play mod league. Mod league is a bridge between mini league and full contact rugby league. On completion of mod league, players make a move to full international rugby league laws.

The Champion Schools tournament is a national competition for secondary schools. In the 2005/06 academic year over 1,200 teams and 20,000 players competed in the Champion Schools tournament, making it the largest rugby league competition in the world. Eighty percent of participants are new to rugby league. The growth of the Champion Schools tournament led to the creation of the Carnegie Champion Colleges competition for Years 12 and 13. The regionally based competition was introduced in 2008 and started in January.

British Amateur Rugby League Association runs the Gilette National Youth League as well as the Yorkshire combination, Hull Youth and Junior and London Junior League.

Super League and National League teams run academy sides to develop young talent. Players under the age of 21 years are eligible to play for the senior academy, the rules also permit three players over the age of 21 to play in academy matches. Junior academies are the second tier in the Youth Development system. Only players under the age of 18 years are eligible to play for the junior academy; no players over the age limit are allowed to play. Some of the better junior academy players may get experience in the senior academy and it is not uncommon for some players to play regularly in both junior and senior academies.

Student Rugby League
Although the game remains close to its working class origins, changes in social demographics and attitudes have allowed many working-class people to attend university where they have continued their association with the game.

The Student Rugby League was founded in 1967 when a team was created at Leeds University by Andrew Cudbertson, Jack Abernathy and Cec Thompson, other teams soon joined in areas of the United Kingdom which lay outside of the games traditional heartlands.

The first university game was between Leeds and Liverpool in 1968. A year later the Universities and Colleges Rugby League was formed after student pioneers fought hard to get the sport recognised in higher education. The first Oxford versus Cambridge University match took place in 1981. The varsity match has "discretionary full blue" status. The game is now played in over 70 universities.

Rugby league in universities has been an important vehicle for expansion of the game as players from outside the heartlands often first began to play at university level. Many continue to play after leaving university and this has led to the creation of teams in non-traditional areas such as London Skolars and Gloucestershire All Golds.

Derivatives of rugby league
Rugby league sevens is particularly popular with pub teams drawn from the regulars at a pub; it is often difficult for a single public house to form a full squad of 13 players and 4 substitutes.

Rugby league nines is the more common form of the shortened version of the game. The Carnegie Floodlit Nines, Middlesex 9s and the York International 9s are three of the best known rugby league nines tournaments in England. The York nines began in 2002 and the Middlesex nines a year later. All three competitions feature professional and amateur teams from England as well as teams from abroad.

Touch Rugby is administered by Rugby Football League through a product known as Play Touch Rugby League.

Try Tag Rugby are the RFL's official Tag Rugby League partners, running leagues in London, Yorkshire and the Thames Valley.

Wheelchair rugby league was first introduced to England in 2005. The first competitive league began in 2009.

Masters Rugby League which uses modified rules to allow older players to continue playing has only recently arrived in England and is not widely played.

Stadiums
There are 36 stadiums in England considered to be rugby league stadiums, most of these are shared with association football teams. The largest club venue is the Odsal Stadium, home of Bradford Bulls, and has a capacity of 27,500.

There is no national stadium for rugby league in England. Despite this Wembley Stadium is annually used as the venue of the Challenge Cup Final, and Old Trafford as the venue of the Super League Grand Final.

The Super League's Magic Weekend is used to promote rugby league to a wider audience. The Millennium Stadium, Murrayfield, Etihad Stadium, St James' Park, and Anfield have all be used to host the event. Elland Road will host the 2024 Super League Magic Weekend.

Popularity

Rugby league is the fourth most popular team sport in England. Historically, rugby league has been the second biggest spectator sport in England with 6.8 million spectators attending the 1948–1949 English season.

Rugby league is most popular in its traditional heartlands and, in those areas, interest in the sport can rival that of association football. Many large towns with rugby league traditions do not have football teams as a result of the monopoly on local interest: these towns include, Keighley, Castleford, Dewsbury, Batley and Wakefield.

The regions in which rugby league is played most are Cumbria, where the amateur version has a high participation rate, former traditional Lancashire regions Merseyside and Greater Manchester, Yorkshire and Cheshire. There is also significant schools participation in London. Many of the professional and semi-professional teams are connected by the M62 motorway and so the term "M62 corridor" is sometimes used to refer to the area where rugby league is most popular. An old survey from 1994 showed that back then, sixty per cent of people regularly attending rugby league lived in only four postal districts along the M62. The sport has since launched several expansion teams in the south.

Fifty per cent of viewers who watch rugby league on Sky Sports live in the South of England. Over 40% of active rugby league supporters are female. At the beginning of the 2006 season there were between thirty and forty female-only rugby league clubs running in England, not including clubs that have teams of both sexes. The majority of these clubs are located in Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Rugby league has for much of its history been banned in the armed forces and in many schools and universities, further stifling growth. These barriers have largely been dismantled since professionalisation of rugby union.

The 2006 Super League generated the highest weekly average attendance in the 11-year history of the competition. The average weekly attendance for the regular season stood at 9,026, generated by an aggregate attendance of 1,516,342 supporters. This is an increase on the 2005 season average of 8,887. The attendances are not evenly spread between clubs within Super League; whilst the best supported team, Leeds with average gates of 15,683, a couple of clubs failed to attract averages of above 5,000. Crowds at matches below the top flight can exceed 3,500, however most of the clubs in this division have attendances lower than this.

Although attendances outside Super League can be quite low, many of the teams play in small towns and the attendance figures represent a large percentage of the local population; as far down as amateur level. An example is Saddleworth Rangers which represents a largely rural area to the East of Oldham towards the Pennines; however the club's stadium contains a covered seated stand and triple figure support for home games.

Current trends
The success of Super League in England and the return of competitive international matches with Australia and New Zealand have seen growth for the sport.

The ending of discrimination against rugby league resulting from professionalism in rugby union led to an increase in numbers in the amateur game, with many rugby union amateurs keen to try out the other code. In 2004 the Rugby Football League was able to report a 94% increase in registered players in just two years, whilst attendance figures for Super League matches rose 8% from the 2003 season.

The annual Champion Schools competition from 2003 onwards has increased the number of school teams from 300 to 1,500 and the participation levels to 25,000 from 6,000. Though these figures include participants from Wales. The number of participants involved in the 2011–12 Carnegie Champion schools tournament was a record 30,713 players across 1819 teams making it the largest rugby league competition in the world.

Whilst rugby union was officially an amateur sport, many rugby union players came to play rugby league. In recent years this trend has reversed and some rugby league players have crossed codes to play union.

Expansion by the governing body, the Rugby Football League sees continual growth in the south of England, notably the London area, which now boasts three professional clubs. These are, London Broncos, London Skolars and Hemel Stags. One of the prime vehicles for expansion has been the Rugby League Conference, a set of competitions for clubs in those development areas.

Publications
In 1989 George Moorhouse's At the George was shortlisted for the inaugural William Hill Sports Book of the Year.

There are two weekly rugby league newspapers, Rugby Leaguer & League Express with around 23,000 subscribers and League Weekly with around 11,000 subscribers. In and around the heartlands, these publications are stocked in newsagents but in the rest of England they are only available via subscription. There are also two monthly magazines, Rugby League World and Forty-20, which can be bought throughout the UK. The Rugby League Journal appears quarterly.

Television
BBC Sport own the rights to broadcast a highlights package called the Super League Show which is broadcast commonly on the Monday night on BBC One, however only in the North West England, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and North East England BBC television regions. Since 2008 however it has been repeated on BBC Two nationally as well as the regional broadcast on BBC One.

End of season play-offs are shown across the whole country in a highlights package. The BBC covers the Rugby League Challenge Cup from the rounds in which the top clubs enter with the final attracting over 4 million viewers. The Challenge Cup final is considered by government to constitute a "listed event" which must be shown by a free-to-air channel available to at least 95% of the UK population.

Sky Sports has the rights to show live Super League and National Rugby League games. Live Super League matches are broadcast often fronted by Mike Stephenson and Eddie Hemmings and are regularly rank amongst the top 10 most watched programmes in a week on Sky Sports with more than 250,000 viewers. Highlights are shown on Boots N' All which is shown on Sky Sports and is rebroadcast on the Internet. Sky also hold the rights to show the Rugby League Four Nations live, whilst highlights are shown on BBC Sport. The Australian State of Origin series is currently shown on Sky. The current TV rights deal for Engage Superleague is worth approximately 50 million pounds over 3 years, beginning from 2009. Since 2022, Channel 4 has shown 10 Super League matches across the season. Premier Sports has also aired one RFL Championship match per week.

Radio
BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra carry commentary from a selection of Super League matches each week, while BBC local radio also broadcasts throughout the season.

 * BBC London 94.9 covers London Broncos and London Skolars.
 * BBC Radio Cumbria report on Barrow, Whitehaven and Workington Town throughout the season as well as the local amateur scene throughout their season on The Rugby League Show.
 * BBC Radio Humberside broadcasts both Hull F.C. and Hull Kingston Rovers matches on The Oval Ball and does simultaneous broadcasts when games clash.
 * BBC Radio Leeds covers Leeds, Hunslet, Keighley, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Batley, Dewsbury, Castleford, Wakefield Trinity and Featherstone Rovers.
 * BBC Radio Sheffield covers Sheffield Eagles and Doncaster
 * BBC Radio York cover York Knights
 * BBC Radio Manchester covers Wigan, Warrington, Leigh, Oldham, Salford, Swinton and Rochdale Hornets.
 * BBC Radio Merseyside gives live commentary of St. Helens, Widnes and Warrington.

Various commercial and community radio stations also give coverage to their local rugby league teams:-

 * 107.2 Wire FM – Warrington and Widnes.
 * Buzz 97.1
 * NE1fm – Newcastle Thunder
 * Ridings FM – Wakefield Trinity, Castleford and Featherstone Rovers.
 * Salford City Radio – covers Salford and Swinton in the Rugby Roundup.
 * Wish FM – Wigan and St. Helens.
 * 96.2 The Revolution – Oldham and Rochdale Hornets.

Cinema
Rugby league first hit the silver screen with Where's George?, a 1935 comedy starring the comedian Sydney Howard. The plot revolves around Alf Scodger’s attempts to outwit his overbearing wife. As a consequence, he accidentally discovers a talent for rugby and turns out for his local Yorcaster club against Lancastrian rivals Oldcastle.

The 1963 film, This Sporting Life, is set around the life of a professional rugby league footballer, Frank Machin, whose romantic life is not as successful as his sporting life. The film stars Richard Harris, Rachel Roberts, Alan Badel and William Hartnell. It is considered to be one of the last major films of the British New Wave or "Free Cinema" movement. Many of the scenes in This Sporting Life were filmed at Wakefield Trinity's Belle Vue stadium and include some Trinity players and coaching staff (Ken Traill) in the background.

The highly acclaimed play, Up 'n' Under was made as a film in 1998. As a comedy set in the north of England that features a bunch of losers, it has been compared to The Full Monty and Brassed Off. The film stars Samantha Janus, Gary Olsen, Neil Morrissey, Brian Glover, Griff Rhys Jones and Tony Slattery. The play was recently revived on stage with England rugby union star Gareth Chilcott in the Gary Olsen role. The film follows the story of an inept pub team in a rugby league sevens competition.

Plays
The Changing Room is a 1971 play by David Storey, set in a men's changing room before, during and after a rugby league game. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1971. The 1973 Broadway production, directed by Michael Rudman, won several awards including the New York Drama Critics' Circle award for Best Play and the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for John Lithgow.

Trinity Tales or The Road to Wembley, loosely based on Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, was performed by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company in 1975. It was later adapted into a television series and shown on BBC2.

Up 'n' Under is a comedy by English playwright John Godber, first staged at the Hull Truck Theatre in 1984. It won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy that same year. The sequel, Up 'n' Under II, followed in 1985.

Mick Martin's play Broken Time is the first dramatic treatment of the historic events that led to the 1895 great schism.

Rugby league and diversity
Rugby league has had a tradition of being inclusive and for some notable firsts in terms of black participation. Professional black players first took to the professional rugby league pitch prior to the First World War. George Bennett became the first black player to play for Great Britain while it was another 44 years before Viv Anderson became the first black footballer to play association football for England. Clive Sullivan became the first black captain of the Great Britain team in 1972, 21 years before Paul Ince became the first black captain of England's association football team. Roy Francis was the first black coach of a leading club, almost half a century before the top flight of English association football would have a black British manager, a milestone also achieved by Ince (on 22 June 2008). Ellery Hanley earned the distinction of being the first black coach of any British national sporting team when he took charge of Great Britain in the home Ashes series of 1994.

In 1997 the Rugby Football League launched a thirteen-point action plan aimed at tackling racism and encouraging the development of rugby league in Asian and black communities. Despite the sport being popular in West Yorkshire and the North West, which both have large South Asian communities, the sport has little following amongst South Asian communities. The British Asian Rugby Association (BARA) was set up in 2004 to encouraging participation in rugby among British Asians.

In 2012, the Rugby Football League were awarded the Stonewall Sport Award in recognition of their work in embracing inclusivity and tackling homophobia. They also became the first UK sporting organisation to make the top 100 employers in the Stonewall Index that measures attitudes towards lesbian, gay and bisexual staff.

Regional web sites

 * London rugby league site
 * Midlands rugby league site
 * North East rugby league site
 * South West rugby league site
 * Yorkshire rugby league site

Touch and Tag Rugby

 * England touch rugby
 * Try Tag Rugby

Blogs

 * The Guardian rugby league blog
 * The Independent rugby league blog
 * The Telegraph rugby league blog
 * The Times rugby league blog
 * Under the Posts rugby league blog

Podcasts

 * Rugby league down south podcast on totalrl.com
 * 5 live rugby league podcast

title: Rugby league in England


text:
Portal:Morocco/Moroccan Websites

 * Dirham.com
 * Almaghreb.info
 * Freelance MAROC
 * BladiZina the beautiful Morocco
 * TeleMaroc entertainment and media
 * Moroccan American Community Board
 * Emploi MAROC
 * A Directory & Information Guide of Morocco
 * The official Moroccan Communication ministry website
 * The Moroccan search engine and directory
 * Moroccan news and information website (In French)
 * Information Guide of Morocco
 * Riad en plein coeur de Marrakech
 * All About Morocco, Photos-Food-Weather-Forums...etc
 * Forum des Marocaines
 * Riad in Marrakesh
 * workshops and studio work yoga throughout Morocco
 * The Magic Morocco

title: Portal:Morocco/Moroccan Websites


text:
Tom Diaz

Tom Diaz is an American writer, lawyer, and public speaker on the gun industry and gun control issues. He was formerly senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center and is one of the more prominent advocates for a strict system of federal gun control in the United States.

Biography
His father was born in Mexico but emigrated to the United States in his teens, becoming a career soldier but spending most of his time in the military as a bandleader. Tom Diaz is a graduate of the University of Florida and the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was an editor of the Law Journal. He has been in private and government practice since 1972. He was a gun enthusiast and NRA member until while working as a Congressional staffer he did research on gun legislation and interviewed victims of gun violence.

Mr. Diaz was counsel to the Congressional House Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice from August 1993 to January 1997. During that time, he was the lead Democratic counsel in the House on firearms and terrorism, but worked on a range of other issues.

Diaz was assistant managing editor of The Washington Times from 1985 to 1991. From 1991 to 1993 he worked at a think tank specializing in international organized crime and counter-terrorism. From 1993 to 1997 he was the lead Democratic counsel on counterterrorism and firearms issues for the Crime Subcommittee of the U.S. House of representatives, helping to conduct fact-finding hearings and write key antiterrorism and gun control legislation. He was also the lead Democratic counsel during 10 days of intensive House hearings in 1995 on the events at the Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas in 1993.

Views
Diaz has written numerous monographs on the proliferation of firearms in the United States and on the impact of the easy availability of specific classes of firearms on gun crime, death and injury in the United States. He has appeared on numerous television and radio media outlets, has been written about and quoted in print media, and his op-eds have been widely published.

He has charged that the gun industry uses claims of increased lethality to increase sales. David Corn wrote:
 * In his book Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America, Tom Diaz, a former NRA member and competitive shooter who became a gun control activist, shows that the gun industry in recent years responded to flat sales by producing increasingly deadly guns. But the gun culture—centered on a device that enables lethal violence — is not part of the right’s "culture of death."

He has also pointed to the way the NRA and gun industry use violent movies and images of death to promote firearms, claiming that the NRA's National Firearms Museum exhibits weapons used in notorious on-screen murders. He claims the NRA promoted concealed carry laws to help sell additional smaller firearms to people.

He has been the backing behind the campaign to ban rifles chambered in .50 BMG.

Diaz is known for his public policy stances that eschew the incremental political approach taken by others in the gun control community, such as Americans for Gun Safety and the American Hunters and Shooters Association. For example, Diaz openly stated that the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban would not have any impact on violent crime statistics and that it only affected cosmetic features on semi-automatic firearms.

Works

 * Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America (1999)
 * Lighting Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil (2006)
 * No Boundaries: Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement (2011). About the rise of American street gangs, notably MS-13 and the 18th Street gang
 * The Last Gun: How Changes in the Gun Industry Are Killing Americans and What It Will Take to Stop It (2013)

title: Tom Diaz