Rugby league in Russia

Rugby league is a team sport in Russia. The Russian Association of Rugby League Clubs (ARLK) is the governing body of rugby league in Russia.

Soviet delegation attended Dewsbury's 1973 English Championship win and suggested that exhibition games be held in Eastern Europe to gauge interest.

Rugby league returned in the late 1980s thanks largely to the efforts of Edgar Taturyan (there are different spellings of his name due to problems converting Cyrillic script to the Latin alphabet). Edgar Taturyan helped develop the new game with players from Moscow's rugby schools and supervised the game's expansion outside of the capital.

Early success for Russian rugby league came in the form of one of the Locomotive Rugby Football Club's junior team of 1987 which was sent to England to compete in a series of matches. Despite being expected to lose every game to their far more experienced opponents, the youngsters won all five of their matches. This proved that Russia could take to rugby league as well as any other country.

Taturyan's work allowed rugby league to become established; more importantly it was established before the onset of the chaos that accompanied the dissolution of the USSR, which would have made it nearly impossible to establish a new sport in Russia after 1991. Luckily by that time the Russian Rugby Football League (RRFL) had already been established.

Mr Maslov, at the time a member of the Russian Rugby Union (RRU), watched a game of rugby league on BBC TV and was instantly converted. With that, Maslov and his friend and President of the Russian Rugby Union, Edgar Taturyan, formed the RRFL.

After the initial formation of the RRFL many of Maslov and Taturyan's RRU associates changed allegiances and joined the administration of Russia's new fledging sport. Prior to the commencement of the RRFLs inaugural rugby league championship in 1990, 3 teams, Moscow Magicians, Leningrad and Tiraspol were sent to England to learn the finer points of rugby league.

On the teams' return all three took part in the first RRFL championship, between the 3 teams which had toured England as well as those based in Kazan, Alma-Ata and Krasnoyarsk. Two of the 3 initial teams went on to play in the inaugural final, which was staged in Tiraspol, Moldova. The occasion attracted in excess of 5,000 spectators.