4. The 'Great Schism'
In England, Rugby was administered by the Rugby Football Union (RFU), based in London and governed by a public schooled middle class with little in common with the working class players of the North. The middle and upper classes were increasingly isolated from soccer after its professionalisation in the 1880s and moved towards Rugby (Dunning and Sheard, 1979), as they could see how irrelevant the middle classes had become in the former once the only barrier to prevent a player rising to the top of the game was his ability, not his social status. By the late 1880s they saw the working classes starting to dominate Rugby, both on and off the field, but they would play their trump card in the years approaching the end of the century. Working class players began to demand compensation for the money they lost by taking time off to train or play, and although there was no written law against claiming expenses (Collins, 1996), the hierarchy saw this as an opportunity to impose their will onto their subjects. There was a purge on 'illegal' payments made to players despite the fact that, "Contrary to popular belief, the RFU itself had no rules on amateurism or professionalism until 1886. ...[The RFU] adopted the MCC's [Marylebone Cricket Club, Cricket's governing body] regulations on amateurism. These rules made it clear that a 'gentleman' who found himself out of pocket could legitimately claim expenses. This contrasted sharply to the general attitude of working class players, about whom it was said, by Harry Garrett, a key leader of Yorkshire Rugby, "if they cannot afford to play, they should go without the game." " (Collins, 1996). There were double standards among Rugby's rulers, who denied working men any right even to claim expenses, but were not so strict with members of their own class. For example, Collins (1996) claims that Andrew Stoddart, the then England captain, was paid £200.4 for an 1888 tour of Australasia; that the Blackheath club was paid nearly £4 per player for a game in 1887; and that the Corinthians, a club representing the ideals of amateurism, charged opponents the considerable sum of £150 a match. Clearly, a mill worker requesting comparatively tiny expenses would not have been punished if there were a level playing field. It seems, however, to be a convenient excuse to drive the working man from the game.
These events led to the 'Great Schism', an 1895 meeting of twenty Northern clubs, in which they broke away from the RFU to form the Northern Union, later renamed Rugby League. Huge numbers of Northern Rugby clubs changed to the breakaway code, enabling them to pay their players openly. Union's Northern strength was almost completely destroyed; by 1890 there were 240 Rugby clubs in Lancashire and Yorkshire, while there existed just 22 Union clubs in 1900, just five years after the split (Collins, 1996). Rugby had been irreparably divided along class lines in the greatest conflict ever to affect it. The shell-shocked Rugby Union authorities imposed a ban on playing Union for any player who had ever played League at any level, paid or unpaid, a law that was in place until Union itself went professional in 1995.
Rugby's administrators must have been fearful of an exodus of working class players from all over Britain. However, this never transpired, due to a number of reasons. The main areas of British working class Rugby support outside the North were the Scottish Borders, the West Country and South Wales. But the small-towns of the largely rural Borders and West Country could never have supported a professional sport. Wales could have done so, but it is necessary to remember the crucial difference in administration described earlier. Whereas northern workers were hounded out of the game, the WRU took a different approach. Despite the similarities between Wales and the North, there was one crucial difference between the two. In Wales, Rugby and the working class had become bedfellows, many of the Welsh Rugby Union's (WRU) committeemen originating from the South Wales working classes. The widely acclaimed Wales and Newport idol, Arthur 'Monkey' Gould, played during the period of Rugby's class struggle. On his retirement in 1896, the WRU built him a £500 house to thank him for his great career (Smith, 1999). The Irish and Scots refused to play Wales for three years due to this apparent breach of the amateur code, but England, in shock over the split of 1895 and not wanting to help the growth of the rival code, continued fixtures with Wales (Smith, 1999). Thus was born the process of turning a blind eye to illegal payments, known as 'shamateurism', enabling a few lucky top level players to remain in Union and still get paid. But if a player wanted to earn larger sums of money, realistically he would have to 'go north' to League, as most Welsh clubs could not afford to pay their players anyway. The result of years of 'poaching' from the Welsh game by League was that until 1995, one sixth of all Welsh international players went North (Bath, 1997). This problem did not affect the other home nations nearly as badly as the Welsh as in England, Scotland and Ireland Rugby was a largely middle class phenomenon, played by doctors, stockbrokers and bankers who were not in need of the financial incentive League could offer. With this acceptance of shamateurism, another factor, but this time thankfully a sporting one, helped to establish Rugby Union as Wales' main game. The previously cited 1905 Wales versus New Zealand test was the main individual sporting moment that helped establish Union as the game in the hearts and minds of both these small voices on the world stage. Rugby Union could offer both of these small nations an opportunity to express themselves on the world stage that League could not.
In Australia too, Rugby matches were attracting large crowds and gate receipts. Many opportunists were making money from the game, with of course the exception of the players themselves, the centres of attention. As in the North of England, Australian players also began asking for recompense for lost earnings, and the future was effectively sealed in 1908 when every member of the returning Australian Rugby Union touring team switched allegiance to League (Bath, 1997). According to Smith (1999) League soon overtook Union in terms of popularity because its simple laws and open play attracted floating fans and those with no ideas or preconceptions of Rugby tradition. In Australia, League was increasing in popularity during the years leading to the First World War, while that conflict would offer Union the chance to inflict upon itself a fatal body blow.
Rugby's first and greatest internal conflict was over. To the undoubted pleasure of those purporting to own and run the game, Rugby had largely continued to be run by the middle classes and was now much less threatened by the working classes. However, the cost to the sport's development was considerable, as can be seen by the dearth of Union in the previous breeding grounds of Northern England and Australia, though there is a much greater potential cost, awareness of which seems to have passed unnoticed. The fact that Soccer became the dominant code of Football in England during this period may be coincidental, though we can only speculate what might have been had the fruitless and divisive battle for the ownership of Rugby had not occurred. With a stronger, united and more influential British game, maybe Rugby would have instead taken root in some of today's Soccer hotbeds, though any assessment of the scale of this potential loss would be impossible; a matter of pure speculation.

In summary, it can be said that conflict has played an important role in determining Rugby Union's distribution within certain major Rugby powers, but that the list of countries where Rugby is popular is more a legacy of British Imperialism.