DBG-Rugby League

The year is 1991. Wigan have harvested all but one of the major trophies in British Rugby League (Widnes took out the Premiership with a 28-6 win over Bradford at Old Trafford) and remarkably legendary Australian coach John Monie has been shown the Central Park door by Maurice Lindsay. Even more remarkably, the club have appointed untried rookie coach Dan Barker Gray as the new gaffer!  (I'm of course being theoretical, none of this actually happened mainly due to the fact I was born in 1991!)  Through the power of the 'classic' C64 game Rugby Coach it's now my job to steady the ship and get Wigan back to the top of the totem pole.  My first task involves the fact that the game automatically dumps you into the Second Division meaning there are no Good Friday derbies or Roses clashes with Leeds to look forward to, instead my charges will be fighting it out with the likes of Barrow, Doncaster and Ryedale-York. The game is also beset by licencing issues so I don't have...

For many years, Bradford Bulls were synonymous with Super League. The club, under the guidance of visionaries such as Peter Deakin and Brian Smith, were the leading lights at the beginning of the summer era as they transformed the image of the club, embraced the razzmatazz of Super League and perhaps most importantly began hoovering up the honours, winning the title four times between 1997 and 2005 in addition to the Challenge Cup in 2000 and 2003 as well as sitting atop the Rugby League world as World Club Challenge winners on three occasions.  The glory days such as their 2005 Grand Final win over fierce rivals Leeds seem another world from the current state of affairs for Bradford.  The club's unfortunate plight is well documented within Rugby League circles as years of mismanagement have resulted in the club being relegated from Super League in 2014 and even further into the abyss three years later when they were relegated to League 1. For all the expansions and moves abro...

Hello and welcome to this exclusive preview extract of A Different Ball Game: A Written History of Rugby League In The 21st Century. In this extract we take a look at the 2007 test series between Great Britain and New Zealand, the last time the Lions played as a unified nation on home soil.  A Different Ball Game: A Written History of Rugby League In The 21st Century is coming later in 2022. You can purchase a copy of the first book in the series Broken Time: A Written History of Rugby League 1895-2000 from this link.  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Broken-Time-Written-History-League/dp/B09KN64W9W/ref=sr_1_1?crid=37EQ6TEIO136V&keywords=broken+time+rugby+league&qid=1656272684&sprefix=broken+time%2Caps%2C87&sr=8-1 A Farewell To Arms: Great Britain's Last Hurrah The 2007 test series between Great Britain and New Zealand was memorable for two reasons. First of all, the series marked the 100th anniversary of the infamous All Golds series of 1907 which led to the birth of ...

Football has FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer, Cricket has had the Brian Lara series and now the cleverly titled Cricket series and Rugby Union had the famous Jonah Lomu game as well as the EA Sports series in the mid 2000s. What about Rugby League though? How has the greatest game been translated into the video game universe? Let's take a look.... Part One: In The Dugout Following on from the success of Kevin Toms' original Football Manager series, Rugby League's first venture into the video game space was unsurprisingly made up of management titles with the first coming in 1989 in the shape of Rugby Boss which was made in 1989 by Alternative Software.  Featuring an Alex Murphy lookalike on the cover and an action shot of what appears to be a fierce Calder derby between Featherstone and Castleford, Rugby Boss was available on both the Amstrad CPC and the Commodore 64. The game planted you in charge of one of a host of clubs with the system automatically placing you in the Sec...