The Dragons of the North: Working-Class Culture, the Miners' Lockout, and the Development of Rugby League in South Wales, 1926–31

The fortunes of Pontypridd Rugby League Club, the most significant attempt to expand rugby league to Wales before the Second World War, have broadly escaped the attention of historians. This article examines the club’s history in depth, highlighting the organization of supporters’ clubs, junior and senior
(amateur) league and cup competitions, and the ties to prevailing sporting culture and the labour movement. Drawing on fresh newspaper and archival research, it argues that, far from being inevitably doomed to failure, another victim of tough economic circumstances, Pontypridd was a viable outfit with
the grassroots potential to survive much longer than it did and that it exemplified the growing diversity of sporting activity in the South Wales Valleys in the inter-war years.