Rugby union football in England

The history of rugby union football in England is closely associated with the institutionalization, and in more recent times de-institutionalization, of amateurism. The first of these processes, and the attendant conflicts, ultimately led to the bifurcation of rugby football into union and league forms in 1895, and have been explored by Dunning and Sheard (1979), Collins (1995, 1996, 1998), Delaney (1984) and Williams (1989). Greenhalgh (1992) and Delaney (1984) have also made important contributions with their analyses of the ways in which the fledgling rugby league authorities, the Northern Union (NU), attempted to regulate and control the institutionalization of professionalism after 1895.