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In 1835, during a frustrating, losing game of soccer, a young player from the Rugby School for Boys in England, named William Webb Ellis picked up the game ball and ran towards his opponents goal. He was tackled before he got there. Thus was born "that game at Rugby" or the game of Rugby as we know it today.

The game spread rapidly worldwide and has been played continuously in the United States since the 1850s. Today, it's the second largest team sport played in the world, capturing as many as 4.2 billion television viewers during the 2004 Rugby World Cup. And, did it with very minimal television coverage in the United States.

In the 1880s, Walter Camp took a rugby team and realigned the players to create the American game of football. With a new set of rules, football was played with a rugby ball until the early 1900s, when rule changes allowed the forward pass and required a more streamlined ball to throw.

Also in the 1890s, Dr. James Naismith created basketball to keep his school's rugby team in shape during the cold winter months.

Rugby has a long, colorful history in this country and is still the only "pure sport" actively played today. With its deft ball handling and collision tackeling, it's a great game to watch.

Currently, there are over 2,500 rugby clubs in the United States, with an estimated 125,000 active players, playing at all levels of the sport.

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In 1996, "Buster" Tieche, "BamBam" Lewis and "Bruiser" Cairney, three former rugby players, just having returned from a satisfying "Golden Oldies" tour abroad, were nursing a few cold boys in a local pub, when the conversation led into a very enthusiastic discussion of forming a professional rugby league. The concept that came out by the end of the evening was smart, simple and colorful.

Professional sports have shown us how to market a sports activity. All the three had to do was copy all that their predecessors had done right and eliminate all they had done wrong. Using these guidelines and measuring them against their strategy, they couldn't miss.

"Buster" went to work creating some smokin' graphics. "BamBam" wrote a solid business plan. "Buster" crunched the numbers. Weeks later, they had a complete plan. All they had to do was sell it to a sponsor.

Easier said than done. In the three years that followed, everyone they showed it to, "loved it,"each one had a reason for not being the first one to make a commitment. Unlike the game of rugby itself, where you make a commitmentevery time you put your boots on, the folks who make decisions must wait until someone else takes the first step.

The suits in business can't make a decision unless someone else leads.

Potential franchise owners would say, "If you had a television contract and/or a major sponsor, we're interested".

Major sponsors would say, "If you had franchises and/or a television contract, we're interested".

And the broadcast media would say, "If you had a couple of major sponsors and/or franchises, we'd be interested". In the business world, it's called "the chicken and egg'.

So the guys met again, over another round of cold boys, to discuss how they were going to get this concept off of dead center. About half way through the evening, they wandered on to the idea of putting their whole plan on a web page and introducing a professional rugby league that exists (at present) as a "phantom league", figuring reality can come later.