Quote ="SteveH"Could "WOM" mean word of mouth? In 1897 the Northern Union had already been established in the UK and split from the Rugby Football Union. However, in Australia it wasn't recognised as a separate sport until 1907 so it would have been an underground sport if anyone was playing under Northern Union rules. Could the paper be referring to people playing rugby league without trying to call attention to it?'"
It's a little known fact that the sport of RL in Australia started with a team from Newcastle which was largely made up of English miners who had played the game before. They played against 7 teams from Sydney, who learnt the game from scratch.
