A sweeping, geographically oriented narration of rugby from its 19th-century origins to the present. The overarching themes are the ideological and socioeconomic challenge of professionalized competition — including contrasts between union and league — and the game’s relationship with (mainly Commonwealth) communities. From 1892 to 1995, professionalism bedeviled Victorian, ‘upper-middle–class’ ethos, most notably in England, Australia, and France. Collins asserts league rules changes in 1906 and 1972 kept the 13-man code ahead of union as a running-handling game, and so a spectator sport, and its meritocratic nature made it more deeply embedded in local communities. Union, by comparison, was a reluctant follower which often pragmatically chose to preserve its authority over strict application of its beliefs. In the Southern hemisphere, turning a blind eye (especially in isolated South Africa) as well as proximity to league’s accelerating commercialization (notably in Australia) better prepared the SANZAR countries for rugby’s becoming an ‘open’ game. Union’s approach failed notably in the instance of apartheid South Africa’s rivalry with New Zealand for world preeminence, when it found itself too far out of step with community sentiment. So too did the communist nationals present a novel threat. There is little discussion of club versus province. When it comes to the US, the two-fold framework falls over. Geography has always been the principal challenge: how to nurture a football code to rival gridiron across a continental nation, and how to win international recognition? As elsewhere, the author sometimes breezes past the evidence and so draws facile conclusions. For example, the US was never unified and so could not have fragmented after the collapse of Olympic rugby in the 1920s.