1895 to 2026 — the Northern Union and after.

On Thursday 29 August 1895 twenty-two clubs met at the George Hotel, Huddersfield, and voted to leave the Rugby Football Union over the right to compensate working-class players for time lost from work — the so-called "broken-time" payment. The breakaway formed the Northern Rugby Football Union; the rule that gave the sport its name came twelve years later when the Union cut sides from fifteen to thirteen and replaced the ruck with the play-the-ball. By 1908–09 the first Australian Kangaroos had toured Britain and the international fixture list was set.

The Northern Union renamed itself the Rugby Football League in 1922. Seven years later the Challenge Cup Final moved permanently to Wembley, and by the 1930s pre-war finals were drawing six-figure crowds — the Empire Stadium era. Wartime suspended professional fixtures twice; Wigan's late-1940s sides emerged from the rebuild as the first dynasty of the modern code.

The 1980s belong to a second Wigan dynasty — eight consecutive Challenge Cups from 1988 to 1995, the period that ended with the formation of Super League and the controversial switch to summer rugby in 1996. Saints replied with their own dynasties (1999, 2002, 2006), Leeds Rhinos took the 2015 treble, Catalans Dragons broke France's Challenge Cup duck in 2018, and Saints won four in a row from 2019 to 2022 to bookend the pre-grading era.

Since 2023 the RFL's strategic partnership with IMG has reshaped the top flight: club gradings replace straight promotion-relegation from 2025. Wigan won the 2024 treble (Super League + Challenge Cup + League Leaders' Shield) and beat Penrith Panthers to claim the 2025 World Club Championship. The 2026 season is the first run entirely under the IMG grading framework. The terrace, in 2026, looks much like the terrace in 1895 — Northern, working-class, intensely local, and entirely unbothered by the southern press.