The Lebanese Rugby League Federation made a successful return to the sporting calendar with the opening round of the 2011-12 Bank of Beirut Championship in Jounieh on Saturday. This is the first season in Lebanon’s history where only official rugby league clubs are participating in the championship. Historically, the universities and the army, then only universities, then a mixture of universities and clubs, have competed in the championship. The LRLF made the change this season, reflecting the growing maturity of the player pool and the organisation of the clubs into standalone organisations.

The first match saw defending champions Immortals RLFC send out a strong warning to the rest of the field with an overwhelming disposal of the home team Al-Galacticos 46-0 (halftime 22-0) at the Fouad Chehab Stadium. The Immortals, who increased their unprecedented winning streak in the process, and are edging ever closer to the world record of undefeated games, didn’t look as if it was their first hit out after the off-season break as they worked into their mechanical routine, led by scoring machine Walid Yassine, recently named Lebanon’s international player of the year at the RLIF’s awards night in London, who bagged four tries and seven goals for a personal tally of thirty points.

A new club, Redbacks RLFC, named after founding director and coach Faysal Jaber’s home village of Dahr-el-Ahmar, which means literally red-back in Arabic, made a winning start to their life in club football. Founded by AUB students, Redback narrowly defeated Wolves, another club formed by alumni from the West Beirut rugby league nursery of AUB, 20-10.

The elite championship is supported by the second tier Shield, which is contested by universities, and in which LIU registered a maiden win against AUB II, while Balamand lost narrowly to AUB in the first match of the double-header at AUB's state of the art Hostler Student Centre. Underneath that open age competition Lebanon’s expanding youth activity will commence in January. The LRLF is currently negotiating with the country's university sports federation to create a partnership which would enable other universities to have rugby league programmes.

Following the disappointment of the 2013 world cup qualifying campaign the LRLF is discussing the representative programme internally, with the next international fixtures almost certainly the third MENA U16 Championship in March.

Pictured: Mounir Finan of Wolves RLFC takes a hit-up against Redback RLFC.