Great Britain Lions History

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Great Britain is one of the major national teams playing rugby league. The team is administered by the Rugby Football League (RFL), and is commonly nicknamed the 'Lions' or 'Great Britain Lions'. The team has also been known as 'Great Britain and Ireland'. The RFL has announced that after the 2006 Tri-nations tournament the Great Britain team will be retired, and that players will be able to represent England, Wales, Scotland or Ireland at the Test level. It is planned that the Great Britain team will come together only for occasional tours, such as the one planned for the Southern Hemisphere in 2010. [1]

Competitions

Great Britain have traditionally been one of the strongest teams in rugby league, though usually playing second fiddle to Australia. They have won the Rugby League World Cup on three occasions: 1954, 1960 and 1972. Since 1995 the RFL have preferred to send the home nations as separate teams for world cup purposes.

Great Britain continue to compete as test playing nation both home and away (unlike the British and Irish Lions rugby union team, who are a touring only team playing sporadically). They compete against Australia for The Ashes, and New Zealand for the Baskerville Shield, as well as playing series and tours against other nations such as France and Papua New Guinea. Great Britain also play in the Tri-Nations.

Titles, selection and identity

As stated above, there is some confusion as to which ?nation? the Lions represent.

The team was orginally known as the Northern Union XIII in reference to the name of the sport's governing body. After 1922 the name "The Lions" was first used. In 1948 the team became known as Great Britain for the Ashes Series. During the 1990s the Rugby Football League expanded this to Great Britain and Ireland, and the jersey bore the name British Isles XIII. In 2004 the "...and Ireland" was dropped from the title, and Great Britain was used on the jersey, however, the Irish shamrock continues to form part of the RFL's crest. Players from the Republic of Ireland have been selected to play for Great Britain, one recent example being Cork-born Brian Carney.

At matches, the team is represented by the Union Flag and the singing of God Save the Queen, both symbols of the United Kingdom. The practice of a UK-wide team being called Great Britain has a precedent with the Great British Olympic team. The formal name of the Olympic team includes "and Northern Ireland", however.

In Australia, the Great Britain team is often erroneously referred to as England, most notably by television commentator Phil Gould.

After the 2006 Tri-nations tournament, the Great Britain team will be reserved for Lions tours of the Southern Hemisphere. According to Richard Lewis, chairman of the Rugby Football League:

"It will bring consistency. What I am passionate about is the international game being consistent. To me, it has always been illogical that we play as Great Britain for three or four years, and when the World Cup comes along, suddenly we become England. In the major competitions, which will be most years, we will play as England. That will also allow Ireland, Scotland and Wales to develop. We have then floated the concept of Great Britain to tour in 2010. It would be a tour as opposed to playing a formal competition, and I wouldn't restrict that to just Australia and New Zealand." [2]

History

Great Britain have won the World Cup three times; on each occasion the largely English team enlisted significant help from Scots or Welshmen.

Source: This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article 'Great Britain Rugby League Team'

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