Sport in England

Rugby union[edit]
Main article: Rugby union in England
The four home nations compete separately at international level. They take part in the main European international rugby union competition, the Six Nations Championship. England won the 2003 Rugby World Cup, the first victory in the competition by a British team (or, for that matter, any Northern Hemisphere country).
The main rugby union club competition in England is a 13-team league called the Gallagher Premiership, and there is also a cup competition, the Premiership Rugby Cup, launched in 2018–19 as the replacement for the now-defunct Anglo-Welsh Cup, which included teams from Wales from 2005 until its demise. Attendances at club rugby in England have risen strongly since the sport went professional. English club sides also take part in the two Europe-wide club rugby competitions, the European Rugby Champions Cup and the European Rugby Challenge Cup. English clubs such as Leicester Tigers, Bath Rugby, Wasps and Northampton Saints have had success in the predecessor to the Champions Cup, the Heineken Cup.
Rugby league[edit]
Main article: Rugby league in England

Leeds Rhinos playing at the 2008 boxing day friendly against Wakefield Trinity Wildcats at Headingley, Leeds
The governing body of rugby league in the United Kingdom is the Rugby Football League. Rugby league draws most of its support from its heartlands in Yorkshire, North West England, and Cumbria. Although playing numbers have recently topped 60,000 in London and the south east.
The top-level league is the 12-team Super League, which was reduced from 14 teams due to a major reorganisation of the professional leagues in 2015. Ten teams are based in the heartlands, with the other teams in France and Canada. Below Super League is the Championship, with 14 teams, and League 1, with 11 teams. As of the next season in 2020, the Championship has twelve teams from the heartlands and one each from London and France; League 1 has six heartland teams, three teams from Newcastle, Coventry and London, and two from Wales – one in the North and one in the South West.
There is direct promotion and relegation between each of the three divisions in professional Rugby League. The bottom placed team from the Super League is directly relegated to the Championship, replaced by the winner of a five team play-off structure, contested by the top five placed teams in that seasons Championship. The bottom two placed teams of the Championship are directly relegated, replaced by the top placed team in League One, along with the winner of a five team play-off structure, contested by the teams that finish between second and sixth in League One.
Following a reorganisation in 2014, the seasons of Super League and the Championship were much more closely integrated than in the past. Following a 22-game home-and-away season in both leagues, the leagues split into three eight-team groups known as "Super 8's". The first, the Super League Super 8's, involved the top eight teams on the Super League table. After these teams played a round-robin mini-league, with table points carrying over from the league season, the top four entered a knockout play-off that culminated in the Super League Grand Final at Old Trafford. The second group, the Qualifiers Super 8's, involved the bottom four teams from Super League and the top four from the Championship. After a similar round-robin mini-league (but with all teams starting on 0 points), the top three teams earned places in the following year's Super League. The fourth- and fifth-place teams then played a one-off match, billed as the "Million Pound Game", for the final Super League place. The final group, the Championship Shield Super 8's, involved the bottom eight teams from the Championship. These teams played their own round-robin mini-league, with table points carrying over. The top four teams after the extra games contested a knockout play-off for the Championship Shield, while the bottom two teams are relegated to League 1. From 2009 through to 2014, Super League consisted of 14 franchises, based on renewable three-year licences, but that system was scrapped following the 2014 season.
The main knock-out competition is the Challenge Cup, which also includes clubs from France, Canada, Wales, Scotland and Serbia (plus, in the past, Russia), and each year culminates in a history-steeped final at Wembley Stadium. Teams competing in the Challenge Cup range from the top professional teams in the Super League, through to amateur teams, plus representative sides from the British Army, Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and British Police, along with occasional invited teams from other countries, such as Red Star Belgrade of Serbia in 2019. The amateur and representative sides enter in the earliest rounds, with professional teams from the more senior leagues entering at later stages of the competition. In addition to the Challenge Cup, teams from the Championship and League One compete in the 1895 Cup, with the final played at Wembley Stadium on the same day as the Challenge Cup Final.
Rugby league is also played as an amateur sport, especially in the heartland areas, where the game is administered by BARLA. Since the rugby union authorities ended the discrimination against playing rugby league amateur numbers in the sport have increased, particularly outside the heartland areas. Through competitions such as the Rugby League Conference, consisting of one nationwide league of ten teams and twelve other regional leagues, including one Welsh and one Scottish league, the sport now has a national spread, at amateur level at least [1].
Internationally, England fields a competitive team in international rugby league. For many tournaments the home nations are combined to compete as Great Britain. The Great Britain team won the Rugby League World Cup in 1954, 1960 and 1972, but England and Wales now compete separately in this tournament and Australia held the title from 1975 until 2008 when they finally lost their grip on the title after being beaten by New Zealand in a thrilling final in Brisbane. England and Wales jointly hosted the World Cup in 2013, with matches also held in France and Ireland; Australia regained the crown, retaining it at the 2017 World Cup after beating England 6–0 in the final – the lowest scoring final in Rugby League World Cup history.
The England team competes in the annual Four Nations competition.
The England national rugby league team will compete more regularly as a full test nation, in lieu of the Great Britain national rugby league team, which, following the 2007 Centenary Test Series against New Zealand only reforms as an occasional southern hemisphere touring side. However, in 2018, the Great Britain national rugby league team was reformed after a 10-year hiatus in preparation of a tour of the Southern Hemisphere.
Cricket[edit]