Rugby, football 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
Rugbeian 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.

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Rugby is now a popular sport in many countries of the
world, with clubs and national teams found in places as
diverse as Japan, Côte 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
affiliated 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.
History
Origins
Different forms of football have existed for centuries.
(For more on the development of football sports, see
football.) 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. These
localized versions of folk football (a violent sport
distinctive for its large teams and lack of rules)
gradually found favour within the English public
(independent) schools, where they were modified and
adapted into one of two forms: a dribbling game,
played primarily with the feet, that was promoted at
Eton and Harrow, and a handling game favoured by
Rugby, Marlborough, and Cheltenham.

Game playing, particularly football, was encouraged at

Rugby School by influential headmaster Thomas Arnold
(1828–42), and many boys educated at this time were
instrumental in the expansion of the game. Rugby
football soon became one of the most significant sports
in the promotion of English and, later, British imperial
manliness. The game’s virtues were promoted by books
such as Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s School Days
(1857). The cult of manliness that resulted centred on
the public schools and the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge, where boys were sent to learn how to
become young gentlemen. Part of the schoolboy’s
training was a commitment to arduous physical activity,
and, by the late 19th century, rugby and cricket had
become the leading sports that developed the
“civilized” manly behaviour of the elite. It was believed
that rugby football instilled in the “muscular Christian”
gentleman the values of unselfishness, fearlessness,
teamwork, and self-control. Graduates of these public
schools and of Oxford and Cambridge formed the first
football clubs, which led to the institutionalization of
rugby.

Once they had left school, many young men wanted to

continue playing the game of their youth, and the early
annual matches between alumni and current senior
students were not enough to satisfy these players.
Football clubs were formed in the mid-19th century,
with one of the very first rugby clubs appearing at
Blackheath in 1858. Rugby enthusiasm also spread
rapidly to Ireland and Scotland, with a club founded at
the University of Dublin 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.

Representatives of several leading football clubs met in

1863 to try to devise a common set of rules for
football. Disputes arose over handling the ball and
“hacking,” the term given to the tactics of tripping an
opponent and kicking his shins. Both handling and
hacking were allowed under rugby’s rules but
disallowed in other forms of football. Led by F.W.
Campbell of Blackheath, the rugby men refused to
budge over hacking, calling those against the practice
“unmanly.” Though Campbell’s group was in the
minority, it refused to agree to the rules established for
the new Football Association (FA) even though many
elements of rugby rules were included in early
compromises. Ultimately, rugby was left outside the FA.
Despite the initial reluctance to abandon hacking,
rugby clubs began to abolish the practice during the
late 1860s. Blackheath banned it in 1865, and
Richmond supported a similar prohibition in 1866.

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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.

The growth of the game

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 (see below Play of the game). 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.