London Skolars
English rugby league football club
The London Skolars are a rugby league club based at the New River Stadium in Wood Green, Haringey, North London. Founded in 1995, the club operated as a semi-professional team for 2003 and competed in the League 1 until it withdrew from the professional leagues at the end of 2023. The London Skolars were accepted into the Southern Conference League (SCL) for the 2024 season.
History
The London Skolars were founded in 1995 by Ian "Hector" McNeil as the Student Rugby League Old Boys. The club was established for post-university graduates in London who wished to continue playing competitive rugby league, with several former international student players among its members. Initially, the team played at Hackney RFC and quickly expanded its player base to include London-based antipodeans and local rugby enthusiasts.
In 1997, the club changed its name to London Skolars, partly to humorously reference its academic origins but primarily due to a potential sponsorship from Skol Lager. The Skolars became a founding member of the Southern Conference League (SCL), the precursor to the Rugby League Conference, and won the inaugural competition (under the name North London Skolars). They also relocated to New River Stadium. Later that year, the Skolars joined the National Conference League, becoming the only club south of Sheffield in the competition for four consecutive seasons.
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This entry incorporates text from “London Skolars” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.