When you hear ‘The Ashes’ as a sports fan, you mind is likely to go to the cricket series that has been played since the 1880s between England and Australia, the name emerging because of a satirical obituary published in The Sporting Times bemoaning ‘the death of English cricket’ and that “the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”. The following series became a quest to “regain those Ashes”, and since then, the name stuck. The trophy presented for winning crickets Ashes is even a small urn, reputed to hold the remnants of a burnt cricket bail (the small piece of wood on top of the wicket).¹

A few decades after the cricket series became an institution, in 1908, to be precise, the Australians decided to get in on rugby league.² With the Aussies now on-board with this new code of rugby, they decided to pay a visit to their English³ counterparts in order to play a test series. They arrived on September the 27th 1908, and played their first test in London, playing out a 22-22 draw in front of a crowd of 2,000. The second test saw an English victory, as they ran out 15-5 victors in front of a much larger crown of 22,000 in Newcastle, before the series wrapped up with a 6-5 English win before a turnout of 6,000 in Birmingham. First blood had been drawn in rugby league’s Ashes⁴.

Since that first series in 1908/09, there have been thirty-eight further series’. As skewed as recent history has been in the Australians favour, the stats are fairly close in terms of overall victories; Australia is just one series ahead with twenty wins to England/GB’s nineteen. Albeit, Australia has won the last thirteen consecutive series, so England’s years of Ashes success are long behind them, as close as the statistics sound.

Following the relative success of the 1908/09 series, the English returned the favour and toured Australia, setting in motion the pattern that has usually (but not always) been followed ever since of alternating tours, Australia has since hosted nineteen, and Britain has hosted twenty (soon to be twenty-one, later this year).

In the early days of the series, the English were the dominant force, winning all but two series prior to 1950, even completing two whitewashes, in 1933 and 1948, a turn of events that is seemingly unthinkable in modern times, as England/GB’s last series victory came in 1970, with a team that included the likes of Clive Sullivan, Roger Millward, and Doug Laughton, as well as being coached by the legendary Johnny Whiteley.⁵

The tide began to turn towards the Aussies in 1973/74, when the Australians claimed back the Ashes for the first time since 1968. They’ve maintained an iron grip on the contest ever since, with gap only widening as time went on, with the Kangaroos completing five clean sweeps of their English counterparts in the years since that famous Great Britain series win, including three in a row in 1982, 1984, and 1986. It’s fair to say that, had the contest continued on past 2003, it’s hard to see ENgland /GB claiming back the crown at any point, indeed, no England/GB side has beaten the mighty Australians since 2006, and that was as Great Britain, you have to go back even further, to 1995 to find the last time England beat Australia.

Another aspect of these Ashes tours was the games Australia would play against English club sides (and vice versa when England/GB toured Australia). The first tour by the Kangaroos in 1908/09 was 45 games long in total, including the Ashes games, with the Aussies coming up against established clubs like Wigan, Huddersfield, and the two Hull clubs, whilst also playing tests against Yorkshire, Cumberland, and Lancashire. This practice would continue (albeit on an ever-decreasing scale) until relatively recently, with the last time being in 1994, where the Kangaroos played an eighteen game tour of England and France.

The series has proven to be big business over the years, even during the Aussies run of dominance, with 57,034 turning up to the old Wembley in 1994, the highest attendance in the format’s history on British soil. Even the most recent series in 2003 drew crowds of approximately 25,000 to all three games, attendances the powers that be will be hoping to exceed in the upcoming series, given the size of the venues booked for the Tests with two of them capable of holding over 50,000 people, and the third almost 20,000.

The prospect of seeing England face Australia will be a tantalising one for many fans, as the two sides meet fairly rarely nowadays⁶, and there now exists a generation (myself included) who have never seen an Ashes Series during their time as a rugby league fan, which makes the prospect of a full three-match series between the two old enemies all the more tantalising to so many.

The series has almost returned on a few occasions. A one-off match to contest The Ashes was proposed in 2009, but was shelved following backlash, and as early as his 2016 appointment. Australian coach Mal Meninga⁷ advocated for a return of the competition. he almost got his wish too, as a series was indeed scheduled for 2020, but was one of the many things thrown to the winds amongst the tornado that was the COVID pandemic. This new iteration of the historic series was announced in 2023, and is also set to include a women’s test series.

So, what will this new era of The Ashes bring? Both sides will, of course, be bullish about their chances in claiming the first Ashes series in twenty-two years. England are coming on the back of two test series wins over Tonga and Samoa, with a raft of exciting talent permeating their squad, whilst Mal Meninga’s mighty Kangaroos have star quality all over the pitch, and are the current world champions to boot. The series promises to be a real clash of the titans, and represents a big roll of the dice for the RFL and Rugby League Commercial, as the resurrection of this historical series could be a litmus test for the game’s future as a whole. Will the English rise up to challenge the almighty Aussies in a thrilling series? or are we staring down the barrel of another dominant whitewash? Will these matches take place in front of packed houses? Only time will tell, but the future of the sport in this country may well depend on this series’ success.

Written by Nathan Major-Kershaw (Site editor & Hull KR fan)

1. Please bear in mind that this is probably a heavily shortened version of events. My interest in and knowledge of cricket is negligible, and this is what I found out from my small amount of research. ↩︎
2. Probably in order to give themselves another sport to beat the English in. ↩︎
3. The team they played was not always England. When the series first started it was ‘Northern Union XIII’ and they have also played under the Great Britain name. ↩︎
4. It was apparently the Australians suggestion to call it The Ashes. ↩︎
5. The side also played a Test series against New Zealand in the same tour, they also won that series. ↩︎
6. The last England vs Australia match was in 2017. ↩︎
7. Himself an Ashes-winning player, holding the record for most series picked with six, and captaining the team for a joint-record nine tests. ↩︎

Statistics for games were obtained via rugbyleagueproject.org. We really recommend them as a source of rugby league knowledge. Also, to read all about previous Ashes series, buy our Ultimate Rugby League Almanac available at Amazon! Paperback: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DSSSXM2G eBook: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DSQCDHRQ