A Hooligan sport played by Gentlemen!
England V Scotland
Many believe that rugby was born in 1823 when William Webb Ellis "with fine disregard for the rules of football (note that football was yet to split into the various codes) as played in his time at Rugby school, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it, thus originating the distinctive feature of the Rugby game".
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There is little in the way of evidence to substantiate this view, it is however the popular view, so much so in fact that the Rugby World Cup is also called the "William Webb Ellis Trophy".
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Like football, rugby has its origins in the various early ball games played during the middle ages (5th to 16th century), sometimes referred to as folk football, mob football or Shrovetide football. Such games would usually be played between neighbouring towns and villages, involving an unlimited number of players on opposing teams, who would fight and struggle to move an inflated pig's bladder by any means possible to markers at each end of a town. Authorities would later attempt to outlaw such dangerous and unproductive pastimes.
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The game of football as played at Rugby School (Rugby, England) between 1750 and 1823 permitted handling of the ball, but no-one was allowed to run with it in their hands towards the opposition’s goal. There was no fixed limit to the number of players per side and sometimes there were hundreds taking part!
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The innovation of running with the ball at Rugby school was introduced sometime between 1820 and 1830.
Different versions of the carrying game – rugby - were played in schools such as Rugby, Cheltenham, Shrewsbury and Marlborough and different versions of the kicking game – football - were played at Winchester, Eton, Harrow, Charterhouse and Westminster.
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During the middle of the 19th century, Rugby Football, up until that time a regular game only among school boys, took its place as a regular sport among men. The former students of Rugby school (and other Rugby playing schools such as Marlborough School) started to spread their version of football (Rugby rules) far and wide. The first notable event was a former pupil, Arthur Pell who founded a club at Cambridge University in 1839. The Old Rugbeians challenged the Old Etonians to a game of football and controversy at the Rugbeians' use of hands led to representatives of the major public schools (Rugby, Eton college, Harrow, Marlborough, Westminster and Shrewsbury) meeting to draw up the 'Cambridge Rules'.
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To begin with, men who had played the game as schoolboys formed clubs to enable them to continue playing their favourite school game, and others were induced to join them; while in other cases, clubs were formed by men who had not had the experience of playing the game at school, but who had the energy and the will to follow the example of those who had had this experience. The introduction of railroads during this period assisted in the game’s ability to spread across the British Isles.
The Rugby Football Union was founded in the Pall Mall Restaurant in Regent Street, Charing Cross, London to standardize the rules and remove some of the more violent aspects of the Rugby School game. The meeting was initiated by Edwin Ash, Secretary of Richmond Club, who submitted a letter to the newspapers which read:-
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"Those who play the rugby-type game should meet to form a code of practice as various clubs play to rules which differ from others, which makes the game difficult to play"
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The 21 clubs that attended the first meeting chaired by the club captain of the Richmond Club, E. C. Holmes, included Harlequins, Blackheath, Guy's Hospital, Civil Service, Wellington College, King's College and St. Paul's School which are all still playing today. Other clubs which are now defunct, or playing under other names, were the picturesquely named Gipsies, Flamingoes, Mohicans, Wimbledon Hornets, Marlborough Nomads, West Kent , Law, Lausanne, Addison, Belize Park, Ravenscourt Park, Chapham Rovers and a Greenwich club called Queen's House. Many famous provincial clubs, founded before 1871, were not founder members of the Rugby Football Union, though, of course, they became members later; among these were Bath, Bradford, Liverpool and Brighton.
Scotland First Rugby Team in 1871
Photo: Unknown/Wikimedia • Believed to be in the Public Domain (age - copyright expired)
Introducing the ball into a scrum
England v Scotland, circa 1880
Photo: Unknown/Wikimedia • Believed to be in the Public Domain (age - copyright expired)
Line out
One famous name that was missing, though, was the London club Wasps. Somehow they managed to send their representative to the wrong venue at the wrong time on the wrong day but another version of the story was that he went to a pub of the same name and after consuming a number of drinks was too drunk to make it to the correct address after he realized his mistake! Along with the founding of the Rugby Football Union a committee was formed, and three ex-Rugby School pupils, all lawyers, were invited to formulate a set of rules, being lawyers they formulated 'laws' not 'rules'! This task was completed and approved by June 1871. The laws have changed a great deal since then and spawned other games, notably American Football and Australian Rules Football.
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By 1880, Scotland, Ireland and Wales had followed suit and established their own Rugby unions.
In 1895 22 of the leading Yorkshire and Lancashire clubs met and formed the Northern Rugby Union, which was to become known as the Rugby League in 1922. This is why we have two different forms of the game, Rugby Union and Rugby League, today.
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From 1895 to 1908 significant changes to the rules were made and Rugby League was transformed into an entirely different and unique game.
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The major differences are:
• 13 players per team as opposed to 15 in union (the two "missing" are the flankers)
• The "play the ball" (heeling the ball back after a tackle) rather than a ruck
• The elimination of the line-out
• A slightly different scoring structure, with all goals only being worth 2 points
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The cause of the 1895 split appears to be how the administrators of the game handled the influx of working class players into the game during the 1870s and 1880s. By not making financial provisions for them which would have allowed them to participate to the same level as the middle and upper classes, they established a situation which could only resolve itself with a split. The split led to a freeze on professionalism for Rugby Union which was to last for a hundred years. It was not until 1995 that the International Rugby Football Union Board, meeting in Paris in late August, took the historic decision to allow professionalism in the Union game.
Source: Wikipedia
Images: Believed to be in the Public Domain or used with permission
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