Date: 17/4/14
The Spanish Rugby League project was founded in February 2013 by the hand of Salome Sansano, Aitor Davila and Matt Dulley and a group of Spanish fans at Rugby League.
In August of the same year ERL was renamed AERL – Spanish Association of Rugby League – being officially registered in the register of Sports Associations by the Ministerio del Interior of Spain.
From this moment the AERL founded the first exclusive Spanish Rugby League team, the Valencian Warriors RL Albal, and a month later the Irreductibles Mislata Rugby League, both in the province of Valencia. After CRAC (Alicante) and Ciencias Valencia, union club will create a section XIII in his sports organization, will write the first page of the spanish RL History in 2013.
These four clubs under the tutelage of AERL are considered founders of Rugby League in Spain.
At present the Spanish RL community has grown to 6 teams, the four founders from Valencia plus a fifth of the Edetans Moncada (also from the province of Valencia) and sixth club in Madrid, the Club Madrid de Rugby League.
Also linked are some historic Rugby Union clubs from Valencian Region like Elephants RL RC Castellon, Valencian Catholic University Rugby, RC Alzira, University of Alicante and Valencia Les Abelles who colaboratte with spanish RL.
The March 23, 2014 was played in Muro de Alcoy (Alicante) first official match of the National League Championship of Spain. This championship is in game and the winner is still unknown.
RECOGNITION AND SUPPORT RLEF
The AERL was recognized as Observer membership in December 2013. Since then has initiated a joint project between RLEF and AERL for development the RL in Spain. To date there have been two courses. The first course of coaches in February and another in April’s of referees. The participation in these courses has been very high, near of 50 students between two courses.
The Rugby League project is generating significant interest in the East (Valencia) and central regions (Madrid) of Spain. The courses are RLEF Contributing to a better understanding of the game and development of English Rugby XIII.
SPAIN NATIONAL TEAM
Also the national team has reached an extraordinary development of the hand of Darren Fisher, exprofesional player of Barrow Riders and Battley Bulldogs. The Spanish team (XIII del Toro) has achieved rapid and great development and is already preparing his firsts official international matches against Belgium in Brussels on May 24th and June 8th Valencia.
