1 Down & Under by Dave Hadfield (Scratching Shed Publishing, £12.99)
Hadfield goes all Bill Bryson. You had to be in Australia last year to fully appreciate just how grim England were in the World Cup. The rugby was glum but the country is magnificent. Hadfield does both full justice in a witty, eloquent tour de force.
2 1895 & All That by Tony Collins (Scratching Shed Publishing, £12.99)
Author, lecturer, historian and all-round good egg Tony Collins brilliantly plunders the archives and plucks out gem after gem. This is history as it should be told, with genuine insight.
3 Tries & Prejudice by Tony Hannan (Scratching Shed Publishing, £12.99)
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Life and times of the trail-blazing Ikram Butt, England’s first Muslim international. So much more than your average sports autobiography - funny, sad, controversial, thought provoking. An absorbing read.
4 Destination Wembley by Graham Morris (Vertical Editions, £21.99)
Lavish and lovingly illustrated history of the Challenge Cup final, from Batley winning in 1897 to Warrington triumphing in 2009. All 108 finals are meticulously documented across 272 hardback pages
5 Billy Boston Rugby League Footballer by Robert Gate (London League Publications, £17.95)
Gate’s superbly crafted biography amply illustrates the extraordinary talent of Boston, the man mountain from Tiger Bay in Cardiff, who took the rugby league world by storm in the cherry-and-white colours of Wigan.
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6 Simply Rad (Vertical Editions, £18.99)
Unlike Boston, Kris Radlinski grew up in Wigan dreaming of playing for the cherry-and-whites. His inspirational rise to the top is heartwarmingly told.
7 Gillette Rugby League Yearbook 2009-10 by Tim Butcher and Daniel Spencer (League Express, £16.99)
Back for a fourteenth year. Indispensable, in-depth and impressive as ever. No rugby league aficionado should be without it.
8 The British Rugby League Records Book by Graham Williams, Peter Lush and Dave Farrar (London League Publications, £13.95)
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Stats, stats and more stats, from Leeds recording a record third successive Grand Final to West London Sharks winning the Rugby League Conference. If there’s a stat missing from the last 114 years, I can’t think of one here. Wonderfully comprehensive.
9 The Indomitables by Colin Thompson (London League Publications, £12.95)
1946 saw the tour of tours to Australia and New Zealand by the Great Britain Lions, who travelled Down Under on the aircraft career HMS Indomitable. A fascinating book includes Welshman Doug Phillips’s illuminating tour diary.
10 Harry Gration’s Yorkshire Sporting Heroes (Country Publications, £9.99)
Seven rugby league players make it into Our Harry’s top 30 - Neil Fox, Lewis Jones, Ellery Hanley, Don Fox, Roger Millward, Garry Schofield and David Topliss.
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Also available: Christopher Irvine, The Times Rugby League Correspondent, has produced a second book from his popular Times Online Rugby League Blog. Rugby League Blog Book 2, published in association with The Co-operative, is available from YFP Publishing at a discounted price of £8.99, with free post and packing.