RL Record Keepers’ Club update

Hi everyone

With international rugby league making the back pages of national newspapers recently (not for reasons we would like), it seems appropriate that that is where our focus is at the minute too. More on that in a bit though…

200 up

Firstly, I’m pleased to say we’ve hit the 200 mark in terms of membership; when we re-launched I had no idea where we might get to in terms of members, but at a guess I’d never have gone so high. Welcome to all new members who are getting their first update here. Hopefully everyone’s found their way around the website now, and is eagerly awaiting more info being added! This will come in due course – we’ve just got to get the data sorted first of course 🙂

International classifications again

And on that point, we’re pretty much at the point of progressing further with the international records now. Setting this up has been the main challenge, and agreeing the scope and defining the boundaries for what constitutes an international (not as easy as you might first think it turns out). We have most data typed up and ready to roll, but I just wanted to use this update to talk more about that scoping, and the immediate next steps.

In earlier notes, I’ve talked about the work we’ve done as part of International Rugby League’s (IRL’s) History & Heritage Group to agree on a list of Recognised Senior International Matches. I’ve also referred to an intention for us to split this list to Full Internationals (matches including a Full Member, or as part of a tournament including another Full International match) and Other Internationals, with only Full Internationals being included in player career records. This was to try and keep alignment with the treatment of some ’emerging nations’ matches in the mid-90s, which you will see referred to in places like the Rothmans yearbook as being flagged for not being Full Internationals or Tests, or not part of career records. It’s fair to say in the absence of the RKC in this period, and with the explosion of international matches that followed, it’s not easy to follow any logic to these games, and the definition I drew up of Full Internationals was trying to retro-fit a definition to how some of these games were treated, though usually it was very ambiguous.

I have reflected on this further recently, in light of some differing views being put forward, and also when thinking conceptually about the RKC’s role, and have come to the conclusion that it makes sense to soften our stance, and align fully to the IRL list which has been drawn up. The rationale here being that this is a much easier position to explain, it removes any confusion, and alignment with the game’s Global Governing Body & the matches they recognise (that we helped to draw up!) is surely the sensible approach. Whilst this does ‘upgrade’ some historical matches, the impact is minimal and likely to go unnoticed – in actual fact it brings us closer to the records of teams like Ireland and Scotland, who already include some of the games that we will now recognise, so again should help reduce confusion. Some of these nations do include matches that IRL do not recognise (for example, when excess subs have been used), but there’s not a lot we can do about that, other than explain the rationale for differences. Helpfully IRL’s list aligns to what the RFL has historically recognised as international matches for its teams, which significantly enhances the credibility for record keeping here.

More generally, this does mean that matches involving teams of a more representative nature (e.g. Australian Aborigines, Rotuma & even BARLA) get given Full International status, but we already had matches involving New Zealand Maori, New Zealand Residents and England A classified as such anyway. This actually brings us in line with the treatment of club games, where the status of the match is the determining factor for inclusion, rather than the status of the teams involved.

So put simply, we’re now in a position where if IRL recognises a match, it’s included in player career records. If anyone has any strong views opposing this, now is the time to shout, as we are about to start gathering data for these games!! More on that below.

The final point on classification concerns work that was on-going around trying to define ‘test matches’. In short, I’ve decided to cut our losses here! Whilst we actually had what I believe was a workable solution for defining contemporary games, and also agreeing a historic list, there were a few anomalies, and some intransigence overseas which meant this would just add more confusion. IRL do not officially define the term, though we’re likely to see it’s continued use, seeing as many use it interchangeably for Full Internationals, or Recognised Senior Internationals. Historically, they are not the same thing, and here, we’ll keep the convention of naming games as they were at the time, and who knows we may even see the return of a Test series, which has slipped out of vogue recently. But the blanket term we’ll apply to all the recognised matches in scope is Full International, which I think is unambiguous, well understood, and historically uncontentious (unless someone flags otherwise – speak now, or forever hold your peace!). ‘Test match’ therefore becomes a label like World Cup game, Four Nations match, or European Championship, etc.

Next steps: volunteers required please

I’m just in the process of identifying sources of teams and scorers for the 268 matches which we now need input for that are on the IRL list which we haven’t previously gathered. If you would like to volunteer to input this information, please give me a shout. Thanks already to previous volunteers, who have done an excellent job here. I’ve been logging who has provided input, and you’ll get credit on the website when these eventually go live 🙂

Missing info: can you help?

In relation to the 1300+ games that we’ve already gathered info for, we’re about 90% complete for these. We do though have 157 games for which we’re missing either teams, or scorers, or both. I’ve attached a list of these (note two tabs: one by date, one by nation), and any input would be brilliant; again, credit will be given!. There’s a strong southern hemisphere focus, and there will be more to add in here, as I fear a lot of the ‘new’ 268 games I referred to above will prove difficult to find info for, but I will share more on this in due course. In the meantime, please just drop me a note on any in the attachment that you can help with.

Please get in touch with any other queries or feedback, and I’ll be back with another update soon.

All the best