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Rugby league has been played in France since 1934. As with rugby union, it was introduced by the English and the heartland of the game is in the south of the country. During the Second World War, in association with the French rugby union, the sport was banned by the Vichy government, an act from which it has struggled to recover. There has been a recent resurgence of the sport following the admission of Catalans Dragons to the European Super League. The game now has approximately 30,000 active participants as of 2012. ==History== Rugby football was introduced into France by the British in the early 1870s. It quickly began to flourish in the poorer, more rural south. The French rugby clubs remained affiliated with the English Rugby Football Union and International Rugby Football Board when rugby split into rugby union and rugby league in 1895. Reports of professionalism and on-field violence in internationals led to France's suspension from the Five Nations Championship in 1931. Following development work by both Harry Sunderland (on behalf of the Australian Rugby League) and the Rugby Football League based in England, the Australian and British Test teams played an exhibition game at Stade Pershing in Paris in late December 1933. In 1934, Jean Galia took a French team that had never played rugby league to Yorkshire and Lancashire in England. The French Rugby League was formed on 6 April 1934. Starved of quality international competition, many French rugby union players turned to rugby league, which soon became a popular game in France, particularly in the south. Within five years, the number of rugby league clubs in France was approaching the number of rugby union clubs, despite union's 60-year head start. By 1939, the French league had 225 clubs and the national side beat England and Wales to take the 1938-39 European Championship, their first. In the same year, three leading rugby union clubs – Narbonne, Carcassonne and Brive – switched to rugby league. The invasion of France by Germany in May 1940 divided the country into Occupied France in the north and a southern pro-Nazi Vichy France, the latter of which roughly corresponded to the rugby-playing heartlands. The Vichy Government under Philippe Pétain associated rugby league with the pre-war socialist government, the United Kingdom and General Charles de Gaulle. Some of the French Rugby Union's senior administrators took advantage of their close relationship with the new regime to have rugby league outlawed as a "corrupter" of French youth. All funds as well as grounds and equipment belonging to the French Rugby League Federation were confiscated and handed over to rugby union. The figure of assets stripped has been estimated at two million 1940 French francs, none of which was ever returned. In addition, rugby league players were forced to switch to rugby union or other sports or quit sport altogether. The federation was reinstated in September 1944, but it could not recapture the popularity it had lost to union due to this egregious conduct. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rugby league in France」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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