“It’s no fun being rebels” — the story of rugby league against the law in Greece

Rugby league has often felt like a dirty little secret, so I’ve picked a fitting spot to speak to George Stilianos, the man responsible for introducing the game to Greece. It’s nighttime in April, and we’re sitting on some benches drinking Greek coffee in the shadows of Kallithea Metro Station in Athens, away from the hum of the high street. There, young people are socialising outside bars and restaurants. Our only disturbance is a small gang of cats occasionally fighting with each other in the bushes to our side.

“Believe me,” says Stilianos, “it’s no fun being rebels.”

It’s no fun, but it’s a heck of a story, embedded in the spirit of rugby league. Greece are competing in their first ever World Cup in England this autumn, yet as I’m speaking to Stilianos rugby league is an illegal sport in Greece. That’s a hard concept to get your head around, and the details don’t help make sense of it. There’s a domestic league, but it’s played in secret. Tournaments are disguised as barbecues. One of the World Cup qualifiers was held at a mystery location, the opponents taken there without being told where they were going. Informants causing trouble in ‘high places’ had police sent to shut games down. Rugby league has only been played here for around a decade, but it can’t escape the sport’s traditional status of more than a century. It remains a dirty little secret. “I nearly went to jail,” Stilianos laughs. “It’s crazy.”

Amid a tangled web of bureaucracy, it became illegal for Stilianos’ Greek Rugby League Association to host matches in 2015. “It’s a loophole that we’ve fallen into,” Stilianos says. “We can’t go into schools, we can’t even play on regular fields.” The dispute dates back to the GRLA’s split from the Hellenic Federation of Rugby League, a governing body founded by Anastasios Pantazidis.

In 2016, Pantazidis’ Hellenic Federation of Rugby League was found to have misled the Rugby League European Federation over its financial management after a formal complaint was lodged by local participants. It was suspended for ‘wilfully acting in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the RLEF and international rugby league’. Pantazidis’ political connections meant he was able to absorb the Hellenic Federation of Rugby League into the Hellenic Federation of Modern Pentathlon, an organisation he just so happened to be leading himself. The following year, Pantazidis was banned for sixteen months from involvement in any sport by the National Olympic Academy Ethics Commission after he was found to have ‘culpably violated the principles of sporting traditions and Olympic ideal’.

The damage had been done. Stilianos’ GRLA has been recognised by the Rugby League European Federation as the governing body of the sport in Greece since 2017, but in the eyes of the Greek government, rugby league belonged to pentathlon. This has meant that while the Greece national team has been able to qualify for the World Cup this year by playing the majority of its matches abroad, domestic rugby league has made some powerful enemies.

Stilianos tells me he is hopeful their application to be formally recognised by the Greek government is close to being accepted. “It would be a huge game changer. Everything now is uncharted waters. If we’re successful, we can look at setting up an academy, going into schools — we’re shooting for the stars. If we’re unsuccessful, we continue running off the smell of an oily rag. We’ve crossed all the Ts and dotted all the Is, but we’re kind of the lepers and still waiting.”

Greece have played more matches than any other nation to qualify for the World Cup, which was due to be held in 2021 but was postponed for a year because of the pandemic. Their ‘home’ games have been held in London for fear of being interrupted by police — apart from one. In 2018 they thumped Malta 60-4 in Athens to top their group in the initial phase of European qualifying, in a game that could only take place thanks to a covert operation. Even Malta were unaware where the game was taking place, told to board a coach from their hotel and not ask any questions.

“Parents of players were asking for the location, wanting to watch their kid,” Stilianos says. “I had to apologise and say I couldn’t tell them. It’s a small community, and I knew someone could unwittingly tell the wrong person. The stakes were so high, I knew if the game got shut down we’d lose by forfeit and not make the World Cup. I felt bad telling these guys their parents weren’t going to be able to see them play, but I’d have felt even worse having to tell everyone there’s no World Cup because we got disqualified on a technicality.”

Malta were at least afforded the luxury of an afternoon kick-off. Three years earlier Rhodes Knights travelled to Athens for a domestic game that had to be played on a private field in the middle of an industrial estate, with the added hitch that it could only begin once local football teams had stopped using the facility at 11pm.

“In Greece, you probably know, nothing runs on time,” Stilianos says. “By the time we got on the field and warmed up, it was 12.15am. The match finished at 1.47am. That was The Midnight Match, which has gained a bit of infamy. It wasn’t deliberate, it was our only option. Everyone was cramping up towards the end. They were complaining a bit, but everyone understood the situation. They all said, ‘If it’s this or no game, then it’s the sacrifice we’ll make.’

Despite the threat of the authorities, Stilianos has been able to form ten men’s rugby league clubs — mainly in Athens, as well as Rhodes, Patra, and Larrissa — and four women’s teams. There are now around 200 rugby league players in Greece. Some of those clubs are currently rebuilding following the pandemic, but a domestic league has been held with fixtures played in secret.

A month before I met with Stilianos, he had arranged a nine-a-side tournament in Athens, with Rhodes visiting, only to receive a call from the police after he “got complacent” and posted details on social media. The event was changed to a training session followed by a barbeque, not a rugby league competition.

“The police chief called me on the Friday and said they were going to be there because they were getting calls from above. He said, ‘I don’t know who you’ve pissed off but it’s gone pretty high up.’ They were sending a squad car to make sure we kept our word.

“They told me, ‘If it’s really a training session, we’re not allowed to see any jerseys.’ They let us wear training bibs. They said no referee, no whistle. [Sighs] Okay, I can work with that. The AEK Athens team turned up wearing yellow socks, and he wouldn’t even let them wear those.

“Five minutes into the first match, he was like, ‘We’re not having this, we’re getting calls from above.’ There was a spy at the match telling someone who was calling the cop station. Before a ball had even been kicked they said shut it down or you’re going to what they call in Greece aftoforo — it means mandatory 48 hours in lock up whether you’re guilty or not, until lawyers get involved and get you out.

“I said, ‘Look, teams have travelled from all over the country to be here, I can’t just tell them they’ve paid their air fares, sorry, go home, we’re not playing today. I choose aftoforo.’ Thank God they didn’t take me there. He got on the phone to his boss again. Credit to the cops, they were helping us, saying it’s not a game, that they were watching it with their own eyes. They got the order to take me and the field owner to the station. They had us there two hours, doing these written statements saying it’s not a match. Real detail about how nobody’s wearing kits, there’s no time limits on the halves, there’s no nine v nine. It had to be eight against nine or ten. We had to disguise as much as possible. Two hours go by, they let us go.

“I get back to the field. I’m on the sideline trying to coach the new team I’ve started. Ten minutes later they called me over again, took me into the parking lot, and ten cops had gathered. This big Range Rover pulls up with a driver and a guy in the passenger seat in a suit. I’m not sure what the equivalent is in England, in Australia each state has a police commissioner, the top cop. Athens is in the state of Attica, and this is the top cop in Attica.

“This is a Sunday. They got him out of bed or whatever for this. He walks up to me and asks what’s going on. I explained to him we’re training and having a barbeque. He was like, ‘Why am I here?’ He said, ‘Look, if things are as you said they are in your written statement, you don’t have a problem. Let them do their thing, stay here until the end of it.’ He got back in his car and left.

“Five cops stayed on the sideline watching until the end. They were cool. When the last match finished I said, ‘Guys, it’s over. You can go home now. Thanks for coming.’ We were having banter with them. They didn’t want to be there as much as we didn’t want them there.”

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Stilianos admits he hasn’t told his wife half of these stories about his brushes with the law. It was the last thing he expected when, in 2008, he bought a one-way ticket to Greece from Australia, where he was born to Greek parents, not knowing whether he was going to stay for one month or the rest of his life. Fourteen years later, he is still here, with a Greek wife and two young sons.

“Future players,” he says. “I’ve already got a soft little Steeden rugby ball in the house. It’s one of those things; I’ll show rugby league to them and suggest it, but I’m not going to force them into anything.”

In 2011, he was working in a hostel, and bored. He launched a Greek Rugby League Facebook page, beginning the formation of clubs and a league.

“I basically worded it so it made people think it already existed. I find that’s more effective. I still do it if I’m starting a new team. I’m not like, ‘Hey, I’m starting a new team.’ It’s, ‘Come join our team.’ I might say that to six or seven blokes and they’ll come and realise the team is just starting. There were three, four, five of us at the start. Then they would bring a friend and we’d slowly get a team.”

Since then, Stilianos has been a player, coach, referee, and administrator. He had to start refereeing because he was the only person who knew the rules, and for a time was travelling around Europe to teach new officials. As a coach he has launched teams, only to turn up to first training sessions to find there might be him and one other person there. At 36 years old and having undergone a knee reconstruction, his playing days are behind him, but he got to play one match for the national team in 2013, appearing alongside former Australia international and NRL winner Braith Anasta, whose father was born in Rhodes.

The national team still relies on Australian players of Greek heritage, but before the pandemic there were players introduced to the sport domestically who had earned contracts in France and England, including Stefanos Bastas, who spent a season at Doncaster. When I meet Stilianos, he is wearing a Doncaster hoody given to him by Bastas, although the self-confessed “rugby league nerd” says he prefers the Halifax-based amateur team Siddal.

“I was talking to coaches pre-pandemic about which of our players could go to France or England to try their luck,” Stilianos says. “We’d reached the stage where three had gone over and gotten contracts. They’re guys who started playing rugby league as adults. I’m so proud of them. Imagine if someone starts at 12 and sticks with it until they’re an adult.

“I’ve even seen a difference since Stefanos first went. He played for Hemel Stags in their last season in League One. I’d emailed lots of clubs and they’d either ignored me or laughed at me. Hemel got back to me and said, ‘We train these days, but we can’t give him anything.’ That’s fine, I wasn’t expecting anything. ‘Thank you, that’s fine. He’ll arrange his own flights, rent his own place to stay, find his own job.’ Huge credit to him, massive respect, he did that, started training with them, and impressed them. He eventually got a spot in the team.

“The next season he tried out at Doncaster. I thought that was going to be tough. He played another ten games off the bench there. Ten games in League One is pretty damn good. I was contacting clubs for him and because he now had a CV, the difference in responses I was getting was night and day — ’we can sort him a house, we can give him match payments.’

“Now when I speak to clubs about other guys the response is completely different, because I can say, ‘You know Stefanos Bastos, I’ve got a player similar to him.’ Now they’re interested and asking for videos and whether we can send him over. Stefanos probably still hasn’t grasped what he’s done for Greek rugby league. He’s really opened a door for everyone. If you said ‘Greek rugby league player’ in England they’d have thought it was a practical joke. Now when you say it, they’re like, ‘Oh I remember that lad at Doncaster, let’s have a look at him.’ He did the Lord’s work for us.”

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The story of rugby league in Greece is the story of rugby league throughout the sport’s history. Ever since it was decided at Huddersfield’s George Hotel in 1895 to split from rugby union and form a new code, it has been the game of the anti-establishment. That split was in opposition to the English Rugby Football Union’s resistance to ‘broken-time payments’ that would compensate the working class — whose talent for the game was ruining the aristocracy’s dominance of the sport — for missing a day’s wage in order to play for their clubs.

Threatened by teams in the industrial north, the RFU had declared rugby an amateur sport in 1886. “If working men desired to play rugby football,” said future RFU president Harry Garnett, “they should pay for it themselves, as they would have to do with any other pastime.” For the next century after the split, the RFU punished anyone who played or was associated with rugby league by banning them from rugby union for life — including Phil Ford, ninety years later, for even considering switching to league by playing two trial matches for Leeds. It wasn’t illegal to play rugby league in England, unlike in Greece, but it still made you an outlaw.

France’s rugby union team was suspended from the Five Nations tournament in 1931 for daring to pay their players. Three years later, they formed a national rugby league side, which trained for the very first time on the pitch at Headingley, Leeds. Rugby league caught the imagination of the French public, but the sport’s associations with socialism contributed to the game being banned by the right-wing Vichy government, collaborators with Nazi Germany, during the Second World War. The ban on rugby league was lifted after nine years, in 1949, but the sport was not allowed to use the word ‘rugby’ in its name, remained banned from being played in schools, and was restricted to 200 professional players.

There’s no doubt that rugby league has an equally long tradition of self-sabotage and squandered opportunities for growth, but I’ve been wondering recently whether I’d actually love the sport so much if it enjoyed a profile more similar to a game like football, or whether I love it because it has that streak of rebellion, of being the dirty little secret.

“The underdog thing is the appeal,” Stilianos says. “The rebel thing sucks. To not be able to openly advertise is so frustrating. You don’t know how successful we could be. I don’t think it’s the rebel that draws me, it’s the underdog.

“Growing up in Australia, with my parents being Greek, I was brought up a lot on soccer. Soccer was a really niche sport back then, people didn’t even know who Real Madrid were. My local team the Brisbane Strikers were such an underdog, playing in the National League and getting crowds of one or two thousand. Brisbane Broncos [rugby league] were getting 30,000 at every game.

“The 2006 World Cup was the Golden Generation with Mark Viduka, Harry Kewell, Tim Cahill, and now soccer’s really mainstream. In the 1990s it was really niche. I’d go to the Broncos and they were the best team and I was one of 30,000 fans. At The Strikers there were a thousand of us diehards, singing our hearts out. What draws me to rugby league here is the fact I feel like I can make a difference and I’m helping the underdog.

“If we’ve got ten teams today, that’s great, but when my sons grow up maybe it will be twenty or thirty. To know I played a small part in that would give me endless satisfaction, more than if my soccer team here was to win every title in a row for twenty years.”

After the numerous court cases, confrontations with police, and nights spent away from his family training new clubs that are actually just one other person and a rugby ball, does Stilianos ever ask why he puts himself through it all?

“I honestly ask myself that all the time. I’ve been so close to throwing it all in so many times. I know it’s a cliche, but it’s true. The amount of times I’m like, ‘I’m not doing it anymore.’ What keeps me going — first of all, 99% of my friends in Greece are from rugby. It’s my life. I feel like there’s a lot of people relying on me and depending on me, if I walk away and leave them in limbo it could all fall apart.

“There’s also this feeling that even though we’ve been at it for years, we’re so close. Keep going just a little bit longer, a little bit longer, a little bit longer. I really believe we’re so close. I don’t regret it, as painful as it’s been at times, the money I’ve spent, the time away from my family, even my job. There were times in job interviews when I’d be saying, ‘I can’t work Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or Friday nights because I’m training a team.’ I haven’t told my wife half of that sort of stuff either.

“Not only that, in the future I’ll be so happy if my kids have a club to play for. The alternative scenario is my kids grow up and will see a game of rugby league and be like, ‘Oh dad, where can I play that here?’ And I’d have to say, ‘Interesting story, we had a few teams at one point but it got too hot to handle and I packed it in.’ That would be such a ‘what if?’ I don’t want to die wondering.

“We’ve got such a good community. I’m sure it’s the same with amateur rugby in England. As much as I love rugby league, if I didn’t like the people involved, there’s no way I would have stayed involved. I need two things: rugby league, it’s the sport I love; and the people involved, I genuinely love all of them. I need both to keep me going. I can’t have rugby union, a sport I don’t like, and legendary people. I wouldn’t stay interested. And I can’t have rugby league, the sport I love, but full of people I don’t like. The fact these people give me the boost I need is the reason I hang in there.”

Six months on from our meeting in the dark outside Kallithea Metro Station, Stilianos is a busy man, preparing to fly to England to attend the World Cup as the president of the newly-titled Greek Rugby League Federation. We’re catching up over a Zoom call because, in August, he got the news he was hanging in there for. Rugby league in Greece is no longer governed by the pentathlon. The GRLF are now recognised by the Greek government as the official governing body of the sport. Stilianos has spent seven years trying to reach this goal. It’s a happy ending, of sorts. Now the hard work starts.

“I haven’t been able to relax,” he laughs. “But it’s been a pleasant headache. It was very satisfying, my phone was ringing off the hook, lots of messages of congratulations which was very nice. It was a big feeling of relief. I hate paperwork, it’s the least fun part. Being a rugby league man we like to be on the training field, teaching people. It’s about as far away from what we actually want to be doing. There’s still a lot more to be done in order to tick a few more boxes and remain a federation, so I can’t really let my guard down yet, but we’re on a very good path, thank God.”

Plans can now be made to take rugby league into schools, start youth teams, and launch a domestic season that needn’t be a secret. When I spoke to Stilianos in April, he mentioned that through word of mouth among players, they could get 100 fans at games where they could not advertise the location or kick-off times. “If we could shout it from the rooftops and stage it from a decent venue like we want to, who knows how many might come? Maybe only 110, maybe 300.”

At the start of October, Greece Women hosted Serbia at a ground 45 minutes away from downtown Athens. All involved were able to tell their parents where and when the game was going to be played, post about the fixture on social media, and not worry about the police ruining the fun. 500 people attended as Greece won 28-0.

“It was just great vibes all round,” Stilianos says. “If we can start having games at a facility slightly closer to the centre of Athens, I’ve got no doubt we’ll get close to 1,000 people turning up. Seeing some of these girls playing in front of their families and friends was just as satisfying for me as it was for them. I just can’t describe the feeling. I spoke to the girls in the sheds before the game and said to them, ‘What you girls are doing excites me as much as the World Cup.’ A lot of them looked at me like, ‘Yeah, right.’ But I really mean that, because it’s something I’ve watched grow from day one and blossom into what it’s becoming.”

Last weekend, the Greece men’s team played their World Cup warm-up match against Bradford at Odsal. While the squad leans heavily on Australian-based players, Stilianos came to an agreement with head coach Steve Georgallis — who also works as assistant at the NRL’s North Queensland Cowboys — that eight of the 24-man squad would be picked from the domestic league, meaning at least one will be guaranteed a place starting or on the bench in each of their tournament fixtures. Greece came back from 22-0 down to draw 34-34 with Bradford, almost snatching a win with the last play of the match, only for Lachlan Ilias’ penalty kick to hit the post. They have been drawn in a tough group for the World Cup, alongside hosts and 2017 finalists England, a Samoa side featuring eight players who competed in the NRL Grand Final, and two times runners-up France.

“Four of our eight domestic players there, I can remember their first day when they turned up to training,” Stilianos says. “I had to tell them, ‘This is a rugby league ball, the pass cannot go forward, it must go back.’ They’ve gone from that to going to a World Cup.

“They’re all loving it. They all played half the match in Bradford. Even little things that you maybe take for granted, playing on a natural grass pitch rather than astroturf for them was a thrill, and seeing proper goalposts and a grandstand and some actual rugby league supporters, and playing with and against some quality players.

“These guys, half of them are in their thirties. A lot of them will hang up their boots after this. If the people here in Greece see one of our domestic guys on TV and can think, I’ve played against that guy, or with that guy, I started when he started and look how far he’s made it — he’ll become a trailblazer and inspire a new generation who will follow.

“We know we’re not going to get past the group stage, so if we lose to England 50-0 or 60-0 or more, what’s the difference? Give one or two of the domestic guys a run, because they’re the coaches of tomorrow and will achieve legend status here, and we’ll build the new generation. They’ll have that prestige of ‘my coach played in a World Cup.’

“We’re all going to gather in a bar in Athens when Greece plays. Whenever one of these guys touches the ball fifty people in that bar are going to be gasping with excitement.” ⬢