Football and Rugby League may seem like strange bedfellows, but Northampton Town's foray into the 13-man oval ball game is not the first time that the two codes have been intertwined.
Last week's announcement that the Cobblers will be running a team in Co-operative Championship One at Sixfields from 2013 ensures that for the first time a professional league team will be playing out of Northampton.
It is not the first time that the Rugby Football League (RFL) has looked to expand the game beyond its Northern heartland, or indeed the first time that expansion attempts have involved a team being based or run by a football club.
In many ways, the two sports share a similar history. Football was once the preserve of the gentlemen amateurs, with a look at the early winners of the FA Cup showing a mix of private school 'old boys' teams, university sides and various amateur clubs.
The shift came in 1883 when Blackburn Olympic became the first professional side to win the tournament, defeating Old Etonians in the final and signaling the evolution of the game to what we know it as today.
Professionalism in football had being fiercely resisted by the middle and upper class amateurs who believed in playing for 'the glory of the game', although their Corinthian ideals could not stop it being taken over by the masses.
It was this that, in part, contributed to the split in rugby. It came in 1895 when a large number northern clubs broke away from the Rugby Football Union - largely over the issue of 'broken time' payments to players who had to take time off work to play.
Both games went their separate ways and over time, the Northern Football Union - later to become the RFL - introduced various rule changes designed to make the game more appealing for spectators.
Since the early days, the Northern Union played games at football grounds. Indeed, two of the tests in the first ever international series between England and New Zealand in 1908 were played at Cheltenham's Whaddon Road and Stamford Bridge.
Yet the first time a football club was associated with a rugby league team was not until 1980, when Fulham launched Fulham RLFC, who played out of Craven Cottage, beating relegated Wigan in their first game in the old Division Two and winning promotion the same year.
The team separated from the football side in 1984 and began their nomadic journey around the capital, and to this day survives as the recently renamed London Broncos after a spell playing under the banner of Harlequins RL at the Twickenham Stoop.
Since then, various teams have been associated with football sides. Cardiff City Blue Dragons played out of Ninian Park for a short while in the 1980s, while Scarborough Pirates existed for one season at the McCain Stadium in the early 1990s after being launched by then-Scarborough Athletic chairman Geoffrey Richmond.
Southend United even persuaded Kent Invicta - then playing out of Maidstone United's old London Road ground - to up sticks and move to Roots Hall in 1984, although they collapsed after a solitary season.
Until now, Preston North End were the last Football League team to dabble in the sport, aside from ground shares, after they bought out Chorley Borough in 1996 and re-named them Lancashire Lynx, with Deepdale their home for four years.
Why then should Northampton's venture be any different? The advent of summer Rugby League has been a booST to the sport and avoids many clashes over pitch use, while the RFL have thrown their full backing behind this attempt.
With Town chairman David Cardoza and the football club's backroom staff also overseeing the off the field side of things, this looks like the start of something good for the sport and Northampton.
