The rugby game played with an oval ball by two teams of 15 players (in rugby union play) or 13 players (in rugby league play). Both rugby union and rugby league have their origins in the style of football played at Rugby School in England. According to the sport’s lore, in 1823 William Webb Ellis, a pupil at Rugby School, defied the conventions of the day (that the ball may only be kicked forward) to pick up the ball and run with it in a game, thus creating the distinct handling game of rugby football. This “historical” basis of the game was well established by the early 1900s, about the same time that foundation myths were invented for baseball and Australian rules football. While it is known that Webb Ellis was a student at Rugby School at the time, there is no direct evidence of the actual event’s having taken place, though it was cited by the Old Rugbian Society in an 1897 report on the origins of the game. Nevertheless, Rugby School, whose name has been given to the sport, was pivotal in the development of rugby football, and the first rules of the game that became rugby union football were established there in 1845.
Rugby is now a popular sport in many countries of the world, with clubs and national teams found in places as diverse as Japan, Cote d'ivoire, Georgia, Uruguay, and Spain. Rugby among women is one of the world’s fastest-growing sports. At the turn of the 21st century, the International Rugby Board (IRB; founded in 1886 as the International Rugby Football Board), headquartered in Dublin, boasted more than 100 affilliated national unions, though at the top level the sport was still dominated by the traditional rugby powers of Australia, England, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, and Wales.
Origins
Different forms of football have existed for centuries. In Britain, football games may have been played as early as the time of Roman occupation in the 1st century BCE. During the 14th and 15th centuries CE, Shrove Tuesday football matches became annual traditions in local Communities, and many of these games continued well into the 19th century.
Rugby enthusiasm also spread rapidly to Ireland and Scotland, with a club founded at the University of old boys in 1854 and the formation by the Old Boys of Edinburgh of the Edinburgh Academicals Rugby Football Club in 1858. In 1863 the tradition of club matches began in England with Blackheath playing Richmond.
Rugby received bad publicity after a Richmond player was killed in a practice match in 1871, prompting leading clubs to respond to Richmond and Blackheath’s call for an organizational meeting. Thus, in 1871 members of leading rugby clubs met to form the Rugby Football Union(RFU), which became the governing body for the sport. By this time, hacking had largely disappeared from club rugby, though it remained a part of the game’s “character building” qualities at Rugby School. As a result of its continued adherence to the practice, Rugby School did not join the RFU until 1890.
Rugby rapidly spread from its elitist origins in England, Scotland, and Ireland to middle- and working-class men in the north of England and in Wales and to the British colonies in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. It also spread to North America, where it was transformed into a new style of football
Northern Hemisphere
Unlike association football (soccer), which embraced player payments and league play in the 1880s, the RFU staunchly resisted professionalism, cup competitions, and leagues, though international rugby between England and Scotland began immediately. As soon as the six Scottish clubs heard of the formation of the RFU, they issued a challenge to it for a match to be held in Scotland on March 27, 1871. The match was played in front of 4,000 spectators, with each side scoring a try, though only Scotland could convert the try with a goal . Ireland began playing England in 1875 and Scotland in 1877. The three national teams formed what became known as the “Home Nations.” Significantly, club rugby matches remained ad hoc in England until the latter decades of the 20th century, and, as a result, international matches took on a special meaning.
Northern England and the split
In the north of England, rugby was organized somewhat differently from in the south. Teams became the focus of civic pride, and league and cup competitions quickly arose in Yorkshire. The game spread throughout Yorkshire to Cumbria and parts of Lancashire, and many working-class men were playing by the mid-1880s. Northern clubs campaigned for “broken time” payments for their working-class players who lost time from work in order to play. Matters came to a head at an 1893 general meeting of the RFU, where the legalization of broken time payments was soundly defeated by southern clubs, which controlled a majority of the votes. On August 29, 1895, in the town of Huddersfield in Yorkshire, 22 of the leading clubs in the north of England resigned from the RFU and created the Northern Rugby Football Union, which became the Rugby Football League in 1922. The majority of northern clubs joined the Northern Union, but it failed in efforts to expand its influence farther afield within Britain.
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