British Amateur Rugby League Association
| British Amateur Rugby League Association | |
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| Founded | 1973 |
| RFL affiliation | 2004 |
| Responsibility | United Kingdom: Social and recreational |
| Headquarters | West Yorkshire House, New North Parade, Huddersfield, UK |
| Key people | Rt Hon. Phil Woolas MP (President) Spen Allison (Chair) |
| Website | barla.org.uk |
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As of 1 July 2009
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The British Amateur Rugby League Association (BARLA) is an association for social and recreational rugby league in the United Kingdom. It works jointly with the Rugby Football League (the overall governing body of rugby league in the UK) by means of the RFL Community Board.
BARLA was created in 1973 in Huddersfield at the George Hotel by a group of enthusiasts concerned about the dramatic disappearance of many amateur leagues and clubs. Fewer than 150 amateur teams remained with a mere thirty youth rugby league teams. The 'breakaway' from the RFL was acrimonious and was strongly contested with a vote 29–1 against recognising BARLA. Thanks to Tom Mitchell, this changed to a unanimous vote of approval for BARLA within twelve months.
One of BARLA's first acts was to merge the vast majority of the district leagues into five regional leagues: the Yorkshire League (initially still called the Leeds & District League), the short-lived Cumbria League, the West Yorkshire Sunday League, the Pennine League and the North Western Counties League. For geographical reasons the Hull & District League (renamed Humberside League) and the Southern League were left unmerged. This allowed clubs to play at more appropriate standards as there were more divisions, and this factor along with the improved governance of BARLA saw the standard and numbers of clubs rise quickly.
The Yorkshire County Cup and Lancashire County Cup knock-out competitions were started in 1973 as well as the BARLA National Cup.
In 1977 BARLA toured Australia and New Zealand for the first time. In that year the BARLA Young Lions made their first inaugural tour setting a lasting trend by giving future stars of the game such as David Hobbs their first taste of international rugby league.
A Cumbria County Cup was started in 1982.
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