The against the odds story of the first Rugby League World Cup

Sign up to our free sport newsletter for all the latest news on everything from cycling to boxing Sign up to our free sport email for all the latest news Sign up to our free sport email for all the latest news SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Sports historian Tony Collins, emeritus professor of social history at De Montfort University, wrote in his book The Oval World: “Vichy’s settling of scores with rugby league was not just ideological, it was personal.” Marshal Petain, the collaborationist leader of the Vichy government, signed the decree proscribing rugby league on 19 December 1941, the first and only sport anywhere to be banned. But out of the anger, the hopelessness and the rancour of the Vichy years, it was that wartime experience which led pretty much directly to the first Rugby League World Cup. As journalist Alfred Drewry wrote: “There is no spectacle in sport more stirring than that of a team accomplishing more than theoretically it should be capable of.” open image in gallery Victorious Great Britain players hold aloft the trophy after winning the inaugural Rugby League World Cup The match had been televised in the UK allowing millions of new TV owners who had bought sets the previous year to watch the coronation of Elizabeth II to witness the first British team in any sport to be crowned winners of a World Cup. But it has been 68 long years since Dave Valentine passed into rugby league folklore as the underdog captain who defied the odds at that very first World Cup.