Last week Rugby League Cares, the sport's charitable arm, announced that the new National Rugby League Museum is going to be housed at the George Hotel in Huddersfield, the birthplace of the game. In this special museum episode, I discuss the plans for the museum with Dr Kevin Moore, former CEO of the National Football Museum, and answer listeners' questions about the project.

This week's 'Rugby Reloaded' talks to one of Britain's pioneers in sports performance analysis, Rob Lowe. In the early 1990s Rob founded the first company that collected and analysed rugby league performance stats; from there he moved on to rugby union and soccer, and became a director of Opta Sports. We spoke about the origins of stats, the impact they've had on coaching in the rugby codes, and where they will go in the future.

How do you market Championship (second tier) rugby league? And what difference does promotion and relegation make to marketing strategies?This week's episode talks to marketing expert Kacy Mackreth about her research into the marketing (or lack thereof) of rugby below the Super League level. What went wrong with the licensing, or franchise, model and how badly did the Middle-Eight play-off formula turn out?

For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (which also has show notes and links for this episode) and follow me on Twitter at @collinstony.

Are Crystal Palace the oldest professional soccer club in the world? I'm joined this week again by Dr Kevin Moore to discuss whether Palace's recent claim has any substance (spoiler alert: no) and, more importantly, to ask what exactly is football history and how we should do it. For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (which also has show notes and links for this episode) and follow me on Twitter at @collinstony.

Where does British rugby league go after the pandemic? This week's 'Rugby Reloaded' welcomes back former St Helens CEO Sean McGuire to look at the tasks facing rugby league in the new post-Covid (perhaps) future. We discuss transparency in the game, deferential attitudes, 'Workington Man', the need for an independent strategic report into the game and pretty much everything else.

For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (which also has show notes and links for this episode) and follow me on Twitter at @collinstony.

For seventy years, the axis of world supremacy in rugby union revolved around New Zealand and South Africa. This week's episode examines how that rivalry was fueled in the inter-war years, via drawn test series, contrasting styles, national pride and, crucially, the exclusion of Maori and all dark-skinned players to appease South Africa's racist policies. If you want to understand Southern Hemisphere rugby union today, this is the key.

For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (which also has show notes and links for this episode) and follow me on Twitter at @collinstony.

In May 1996 Wigan played union and Bath played league in a historic clash of the rugby codes. Each won a match in their own code but, between the two matches, Wigan also won union's Middlesex 7s. It was 100 years since rugby's great split, but the differences that tore the game apart then were just as apparent in 1996. The playing styles and stereotypes of the Victorian age continued to burn brightly - the games were not just a clash of the codes, they were also a clash of cultures.

For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (which also has show notes and links for this episode) and follow me on Twitter at @collinstony.

Is soccer the original form of football that was played in pre-industrial times? But modern soccer looks nothing like the ancient forms of folk football - and for its first few years it was barely distinguishable from rugby. So how did it become the most popular type of football?

This week's episode examines whether it was soccer's rules that made it popular or something much more fundamental in late-Victorian Britain.

For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (which also has show notes and links for this episode) and follow me on Twitter at @collinstony.

In the 1980s, few players bestrode rugby league like Kiwi Olsen Fillipaina. Size, speed, skills and a football super-brain, Olsen had it all. But perhaps even more importantly, he became a symbol of the emergence of Pacific Island players in rugby league and a genuine insipration to those who came after him.

But being a pioneer takes its toll, and Olsen suffered from vicious racism and unsympathetic coaches. Patrick Skene's new book 'The Big O. The Life and Times of Olsen Filipaina, Pacific Revolution Pioneer' tells Olsen's story in its full glory, and charts the rise of rugby league's Pacific revolutionaries.

For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (which also has show notes and links for this episode) and follow me on Twitter at @collinstony.

This week's episode talks to Dr Kevin Marston about his research into the short history of America's first football club, Oneida FC of Boston, which was formed in 1862 in the midst of the American Civil War. What link did it have to American football and soccer and, perhaps even more intriguingly, how has its story been used by supporters of both codes to legitimise their heritage? It's a dispute that is still being played out, as controversy reigns about the shape of the ball on the monument to the club on Boston Common.

For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (which also has show notes and links for this episode) and follow me on Twitter at @collinstony.