Free learning resources from arts, cultural and heritage organisations.

Teachers' Notes

Resource created by Heritage Quay

 

This resource accompanies the film 'Sport', which can be viewed here.  The full resource can be downloaded as a teacher pack from the downloads page and includes printable colouring sheets.

Curriculum Links

  • KS1 Local History Study: Significant local events, people and places

The role played by Huddersfield in founding Rugby League places the town at the centre of the sport’s heritage. The collection includes many photographic and other items relating to local players as well as handling sessions, making it an ideal focus for engaging children with their local history.

  • KS2 Local History Study: Study of an aspect or theme in British History that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066

Teachers could choose sport, leisure and entertainment as a focus theme, and study the history of Rugby League within that. The sport has its roots in the medieval game of mob football, and developed against a backdrop of privilege, the industrial revolution, an emerging wealthy middle class, the struggle for working class rights and equality of women in sport. All these elements can be found in the RFL collection at Heritage Quay.

 

The Rugby Football League (RFL) was founded in Huddersfield in 1895 and Rugby League is central to the sports archive at Heritage Quay. It includes items of kit, as well as rare match programmes, advertising material and player registers and correspondence. Smaller collections on cricket are also held.

 

Activity Ideas

  • Study popular sporting pastimes throughout the centuries

  • Study the history of rugby and football side by side

  • Investigate women’s rugby and women’s football, investigating the opposition that greeted them in the late 19th, early 20th centuries and the challenges they overcame to participate in the sport

  • Investigate how the rules of play for football and rugby have changed

  • Research the events leading up to the Great Split and the aftermath

  • Compare changes in clothing, balls and protective gear 150 years apart

  • Visit Heritage Quay to handle original items

  • Investigate the international emblems worn by teams such as New Zealand, Australia, Wales and Scotland. What do they signify? (see Further Links and Resources)

  • Research original team colours and colour in the worksheets for each team (see Downloads for these resources)

  • Design their own international cap, team kit and emblems to reflect local features/signficant events