Governing Body
In 1907 The Welsh Northern Union was formed in Wrexham, but the Northern Union refused it affiliation as they wanted the body located in the South of Wales and the WNU soon folded.

In 1926 The RFL formed a Welsh commission in an attempt to convert rugby union clubs to rugby league. Wales Rugby League achieved governing body status in 2005 and employed its first professional chairman, Mark Rowley, in 2006.

Competitions
Briefly during the 1908-09 season, there were sufficient numbers of clubs to run a separate Welsh section of the competition, alongside the Northern Union's Yorkshire and Lancashire Leagues.

From 1949 to 1955 a Welsh league was run by the Welsh commission but it was disbanded due to lack of interest and finance.

Domestically, Welsh rugby league is now largely integrated with English competitions. Amateur Welsh teams form a division in the Rugby League Conference, this division being one of the four "Premier Divisions" of the conference. Celtic Crusaders represent Wales at the professional level within the RFL's structures.

History & more

Popularity
With the Rugby League Conference’s growth throughout England, the RFL and its WRL arm, setup an amateur club, the Cardiff Demons. The Demons, who were mainly made up of former players from the university UWIC rugby league club were quite successful and instantly saw interest from other parts of Wales grow.

After two years of just one club, the RFL saw that it was time to expand, letting in six more open-aged sides to form a component of the Rugby League conference. There were then 7 rugby league teams in the Welsh division (with another club North Wales Coasters playing in one of the English divisions due to traveling logistics) of the Rugby League Conference, however in 2006 Blackwood Bulldogs, West Wales Sharks (based in Llanelli) and Pembroke Panthers (based in Tenby) were added. The Welsh division was then divided into two sections Eastern and Western each consisting of five teams.

Matches between them generally draw crowds of around 300 spectators. Matches for the national team have tended to draw crowds of around 10,000. During the reconstruction of Wembley stadium the Challenge Cup final was played at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium and one year a reported 15,000 tickets were sold in Wales.