Abstract
France was the first non-English speaking, non-island and non-monarchist country to embrace the game of rugby league football. Given the particular situation of the sport in France, this article will use sources from French archives and French sport literature to understand rugby league's dramatic and singular fate in France. The article will concentrate on the political aspects of this history and compare the differing relation of sport to the state and local institutions in France and Great Britain. Five successive periods will be distinguished: from the daring and audacious initial launch of league in 1934 to the coming back into line starting in 1954. Rugby league shone like a star as long as the Front Populaire was in power in the 1930s, then totally disappeared during the dark years of Vichy and subsequently, and quite counter-intuitively, struggled for life at the time of La Libération, which itself was soon followed by the Cold War, which itself initiated a new political order with unexpected consequences for the destiny of rugby league football in France.
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