Great Britain national rugby league team

Great Britain
Badge of Great Britain team
Team information
NicknameThe Lions
Governing bodyRugby Football League
Most capsGarry Schofield (46)
Mick Sullivan (46)
Top try-scorerMick Sullivan (41)
Top point-scorerNeil Fox (228)
Uniforms
First colours
Team results
First international
 Great Britain 14–6 New Zealand 
Headingley, Leeds, England
(18 January 1908)
Biggest win
 Fiji 4–72 Great Britain 
National Stadium, Suva, Fiji
(October 1996)
Biggest defeat
 Australia 64–10 Great Britain 
Stadium Australia, Sydney, Australia
(July 2002)

The Great Britain national rugby league team represents Great Britain in rugby league. Administered by the Rugby Football League (RFL), the team is nicknamed The Lions.

For most of the 20th century, the Great Britain team toured overseas, played against foreign touring teams and competed in the Rugby League World Cup, which they won three times: in 1954, 1960 and 1972.

Since 1995, the RFL has sent separate home nations teams to the World Cup. Great Britain continued to compete as a Test playing nation both home and away. They competed against Australia for the Ashes, and New Zealand for the Baskerville Shield, as well the Tri-Nations series with both Australia and New Zealand. Great Britain also played in series and tours against France, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

In 2006, the RFL announced that after the 2007 All Golds Tour the Great Britain team would no longer compete on a regular basis. Instead its players would represent England, Wales and Scotland at Test level,[1] and it was planned that the Great Britain team would come together in future only for occasional tours, similar to the British and Irish Lions in rugby union.

The Lions most recently played in 2019, in a tour of Papua New Guinea and New Zealand.[2]

  1. ^ "Sporting Life". Archived from the original on 10 February 2012.
  2. ^ "Lions to tour New Zealand in 2019". BBC Sport. Archived from the original on 6 April 2019. Retrieved 26 September 2020.