Rugby League vs. Rugby Union — Cross-Code Matches
The rare occasions the two codes have played each other directly.
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
Rugby league and rugby union have met on the field only a handful of times since the 1895 split that created rugby league in the first place — most notably Wigan and Bath's two-match "Clash of the Codes" in 1996, and a one-off hybrid match between Sale Sharks and St Helens in 2003. There has been no top-level cross-code fixture since.
Every cross-code match
| Date | Result | Venue |
|---|---|---|
| 8 May 1996 | Wigan Warriors 82, Bath 6 | Maine Road, Manchester |
| Played under rugby league rules. Martin Offiah scored six tries for Wigan. | ||
| 25 May 1996 | Bath 44, Wigan Warriors 19 | Twickenham, London |
| Played under rugby union rules — the return leg of the same two-match series, 100 years after the 1895 split that created rugby league. Bath's forward dominance reversed the first leg's result. | ||
| 27 January 2003 | Sale Sharks 41, St Helens 39 | Knowsley Road, St Helens |
| A single hybrid match, one half played under each code's rules — neither side scored in the opposing code's half. The combined 80 points is a Guinness World Record for a professional cross-code rugby match. | ||
Why so few
Rugby league split from rugby union in 1895 over paying players, and the two codes spent a century as separate, often openly hostile, sports — union stayed strictly amateur until 1995, which alone ruled out any official fixture between a professional league club and a union side. Union turning professional in 1995 removed that barrier just in time for the 1996 Wigan-Bath series, staged deliberately to mark the split's centenary. The two codes still use different laws (13 players vs. 15, different tackle/ruck rules, different scoring), so any match has to either pick one code's rules outright or split the game into hybrid halves — both formats were tried in these two fixtures, and neither has been repeated at this level since 2003.
Sources
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
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