In his book “A Family Madness” Thomas Kenneally wrote about a fictitious Penrith player and the game this young man played which was unlike any that the migrating European people of the time could comprehend. Keneally Manly Sea Eagle tragic and author of the brilliant Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith and Schindlers List, wrote of this game. “Rugby league is a game whose laws had been codified by miners and mill workers in the forlorn north of England, miners and mill workers of Bradford and Wigan, Hull and Warrington were invaded by that peculiar genius which concerns itself with the serious business of human games and produced what was the supreme code, a cellular structure comprised of 13 players which mimicked life and art and war so exactly that it became them” 1908 Rugby league was first played in NSW
Oct
09