page_title: History of rugby union in Australia
section_title: Recovery
hierarchical_section_title: History of rugby union in Australia / Twentieth century / Recovery
caption_attribution_description: English: The origins of Rugby Union in Queensland. Rugby was still a new sport in Queensland in the 1890s. The game only became popular in the late 1880s, but was the dominant code in Queensland until the advent of Rugby League in 1908. Recreational pursuits like football were limited to Saturday afternoon. Sunday was for church and ‘rest’. Sports only became popular as the working week was shortened from six days to five and a half in the late 1900s. Queensland Museum holds over 1000 of Bert Roberts' plate glass negatives and prints from the era.
context_page_description: Rugby union has a long history in Australia, with the first club being formed in 1863 at Sydney University. Today it holds tier one status with World Rugby and has over 82,000 players nationwide.
context_section_description: In 1903, Australia played its first test against the All Blacks, in front of a crowd of 30,000 at the Sydney Cricket Ground. In 1907, Australia again played the All Blacks, at the same venue as the 1903 match, with crowd numbers reaching 50,000. This figure would not be surpassed again by rugby union at the ground after the start of rugby league in 1908 (the SFS commenced as the Sydney rectangular venue for rugby league and union in 1988).
  By the time of the 1910 British Lions rugby league tour, rugby league was well entrenched as the major winter sport in all of Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, surpassing rugby union. This was a position from which rugby union would never recover in Australia.
  In 1928 the QRU reformed, and the GPS and major clubs returned to rugby union. In 1931, the governor of New Zealand donated a sporting trophy called the Bledisloe Cup, named appropriately after Charles Bathurst, 1st Viscount Bledisloe, for competition between Australia and New Zealand. The first game was held that year at Eden Park, though the official start of the competition is disputed between that game and the 1932 New Zealand tour to Australia.
  During the 1930s, the playing of sport on Sunday was banned in most of the country outside South Australia. During the 1930s, rugby league, which had gone professional, began to overtake rugby union in popularity in Queensland, with the league being the dominant spectator code by 1937.
  The late 1940s saw the construction of a national governing body, as opposed to the NSWRU being the main organisation. In 1949, the Australian Rugby Union joined the world governing body, then known as the International Rugby Football Board (IRFB). Since 2017, the national governing body has been known as Rugby Australia.
caption: A rugby game in Queensland during the early 1900s.
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