Why Rugby Isn’t a Thing in Liverpool (But Rugby League is Massive Just Outside)

There are plenty of places in the United Kingdom where rugby is hugely popular. You could make a very solid argument that it is the national sport of Wales, with the Scottish also likely to make a similar claim.

The Irish, both Northern and Southern, have never been shy of getting stuck into a game of the sport with the egg-shaped ball, with all four of those nations having had an influence on Liverpool over the years.

Yet for whatever reason, rugby as a sport has never really caught on in Liverpool in the same way as it has in plenty of other locations.

The fact that rugby league is relatively popular nearby makes it even odder, so why?

Liverpool is a Football City

The simplest answer to the question about why rugby hasn’t caught on in Liverpool is that football very much has. There was a time, back when the two sports were first being formed, where football and rugby were extremely similar in their nature.

The sports essentially splintered away from one another because of a disagreement about the rules and the way that the sports should be played, which is why rugby is sometimes still referred to as ‘rugby football’ by some. The other sport, meanwhile, is officially known as ‘association football’ in many quarters, with the first of those words being where the name ‘soccer’ came from.

There were plenty of people who preferred rugby, so that was the sport that began to take hold in some areas, whilst the vast majority enjoyed football more. Liverpool, it is fair to say, fell into the latter category.

When Everton decided that they didn’t want to pay the money that John Houlding was demanding to allow them to carry on playing at Anfield, they departed for Goodison Park. Houlding believed that the sport of football was popular enough to mean that the city could cope with two teams playing in it, founding Liverpool as a result. With two major teams playing football in the city, there was no real room for rugby.

Kids Don’t Want to Play It

One of the big problems for rugby as a sport in Liverpool is that school age children aren’t really playing it. There are some schools in the area that ask them to, but the majority of kids aren’t not all that interested in doing so. Football is not only more interesting for them but it’s also much cheaper for the schools themselves to get the youngsters playing.

Without a large number of children taking part in the game, there is no talent pool for the teams to work with and introduce the sport to the local area in any meaningful way. The fact that rugby league is played nearby means that any kids that show an aptitude for the sport go there.

Rugby could learn a lot from #NFL People talk about how to get more kids engaged with rugby but could you imagine CBBC or CITV doing this for the Six Nations? Probably too forward-thinking for the rugby blazers.pic.twitter.com/3rv9zrGTnZ

— Jamie Phillips (@JNPhillips4) January 17, 2022

Most, though, will want to emulate their local heroes. Kids will be in the playground kicking a football around and pretending that they’re Trent Alexander-Arnold, Mo Salah or Seamus Coleman; the people that they are more likely to see on the TV. You can play football virtually anywhere, whereas rugby needs grass to be played in any sort of safe and sensible manner.

The children will, more often than not, copy their parents. In Liverpool, those parents are far more likely to be football-obsessed than show any real interest in rugby, so the vast majority of kids are unlikely to even know what rugby is, let alone want to play it.

It Might be a Class Thing

There is an extent to which rugby is seen by many as being a Tory sport. As ridiculous as that may seem, it is built into the very fabric of the sport that it is watched by those with more economic affluence than football. The old saying is, “Rugby is a sport played by thugs and watched by gentlemen, whilst football is the other way around”.

That offers the impression that rugby is for the upper classes to enjoy, which is likely to put many working class people off. Liverpool is well-known as a city to dislike the Conservative and Unionist Party, so it is perhaps not all that surprising that the sport of the Tories is not well-liked there.

@elliottcassdude POV: Every Rugby Lad #ruggers #rugby #comedysketch #rugbylads ♬ original sound – ElliottCassdude

This isn’t just snobbery that is being espoused either. There was research done to reflect the sports most enjoyed by voters for the various political parties in the country. The research showed that rugby union is the most ‘Conservative’ team sport, loved by the ‘Hooray Henries’ who attend private schools.

Of the stadiums that hosted rugby union at the time of the 2019 General Election, 40% of them were located in Tory constituencies. That is compared to 29% of football stadiums, whilst just 18% of rugby stadium were located in the country’s most deprived areas when put alongside the 42% of football grounds.

There Are Rugby League Options Nearby

One of the other big reasons why rugby union hasn’t taken off in Liverpool is that there are rugby league teams located in some of the nearby cities. Just as rugby union was considered to be ‘Tory’ on account of the fact that 40% of the stadiums were located in Tory constituencies, just 3% of rugby league stadiums were.

On the other hand, 97% of the rugby league stadiums were in Labour-voting areas, showing that it is not thought of as being ‘Tory’ in quite the same way. Liverpool did have a rugby league team for a time, which was when Wigan Highfield moved to London, found it too expensive and relocated to Liverpool.

26,234 at Anfield. They’ve all been treat to an incredible game of Test match rugby. What a day for the game this has been.

— ᴀᴀʀᴏɴ ʙᴏᴡᴇʀ (@AaronBower) November 4, 2018

Based in the Stanley Greyhound Stadium, they became known as Liverpool Stanley and won the Lancashire League in 1936. They then moved to Knotty Ash and became Liverpool City, before moving again and taking on the moniker of Huyton RLFC. After another few moves, the club was eventually wound up in 1996. Nowadays, Liverpool Lions, an amateur side, is the only representative of any form of rugby in the city.

In spite of Anfield hosting a number of different rugby matches since the Main Stand was redeveloped, rugby remains a sport that people are happier to travel to the likes of St. Helens to watch than clamour for a team in Liverpool itself.