Which sport came first - Rugby league or rugby union?

The history of rugby league as a separate form of rugby football goes back to 1895 in Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire when the Northern Rugby Football Union broke away from England's established Rugby Football Union to administer its own separate competition. Similar schisms occurred later in Australia and New Zealand in 1907. Gradually the rugby played in these breakaway competitions evolved into a distinctly separate sport that took its name from the professional leagues that administered it

The issue of "broken time" payments then reached boiling point at the RFU's AGM. Hornby - a true amateur - argued for broken time payments because "the so-called amateur sides ask for large guarantees, publish no balance sheets and distribute expenses far larger than would be paid to a professional player". Yorkshire complained that, although there are more rugby clubs in the North of England than in the South, more Southerners than Northerners populate the RFU Committee. Also, Committee meetings are held in London at times that are not suitable for Northern folk to attend ...

However, by the end of July 1895, Huddersfield, Batley, Dewsbury, Bradford, Manningham, Leeds, Halifax, Brighouse Rangers, Hull, Liversedge, Hunslet and Wakefield had announced their resignation from the Yorkshire Union. They were now rugby outcasts. On Tuesday, August 20, 1895, at a meeting at the Mitre Hotel, Leeds, the 12 clubs agreed they should form a Northern Union, but at the same time made it clear they wished to retain their links with the Yorkshire Union. It was decided that a five-man panel would meet a sub-committee of the Yorkshire Union to place before them a scheme for the settlement of the dispute.' The Union, however, immediately rejected the proposal.

The clubs decided to break all links with the union and to form the Northern Rugby Football Union NRFU (on amateur lines, but with the acceptance of the principle of payment for broken time). It was also agreed to hold a joint meeting of Yorkshire and Lancashire clubs at the George Hotel, Huddersfield on Thursday, August 29, when the formation of the NRFU could be officially announced.