Rugby
Rugby or Rugby union is a full contact team sport, originating in the early 19th century. It is played outdoors on a field, 100 m long and 70 m wide. At each end of the field is a goal area with an "H" shaped goal, and played with an oval-shaped ball.
Points can be scored in several ways - a try, scored by grounding the ball in the in-goal area, is worth 5 points and a subsequent conversion kick scores 2 points. A successful penalty kick or a drop goal each score 3 points. The team scoring the most points wins the game.
A rugby union team consists of 15 players on the field and 7 substitutes to bring on during the game. Players in a team are split up into forwards and backs. Forwards are generally big and strong and do most physical duties during the game while backs are generally smaller but faster, more agile and the main points scorers for the team.
Rugby union is often categorized along with rugby league as rugby football. William Webb Ellis is often credited with the idea of running with the ball in hand, when, in 1823, at Rugby School he caught the ball, while playing football, and ran towards the opposition goal. Ellis was immortalised at the school with a plaque commemorating his innovation. 25 years later the first rules were written out by pupils, this was one of recognized events in the early development of rugby, others include the Blackheath Club's decision to leave The Football Association in 1863, and in 1895, rugby union and rugby league were acknowledged as separate sports.
Rugby union has been governed by the International Rugby Board since its formation in 1886 and currently has 115 unions under its governance from separate nations. It was the IRB's decision to turn rugby union, which was famously amateur, professional in 1995, removing restrictions on payments to players.
The Rugby World Cup, first held in 1987, is the ultimate goal for rugby nations; held every four years, the winner of the tournament receives the Webb Ellis Cup, named after William Webb Ellis who is credited with invention of Rugby Football. The Six Nations in Europe and the Tri Nations in the southern hemisphere are major international competitions held annually. Major domestic competitions include the Top 14 in France, the Guinness Premiership in England, the Currie Cup in South Africa, and the Air New Zealand Cup in New Zealand.
The origin of rugby is reputed to be an incident during a game of English school football at Rugby School, Rugby, England, in 1823 when William Webb-Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it. Although this tale is apocryphal, the trophy played for every four years at the Rugby World Cup is named after him. Rugby football actually stems from a game played at Rugby School, Rugby, which old pupils carried to football clubs such as Blackheath, and with the first official set of rules written at Rugby School, the code was officially recognised.
Significant events in the early development of rugby were the production of the first set of written laws in 1845, the Blackheath Club's decision to leave the The Football Association in 1863 and the formation of the Rugby Football Union in 1871. The code was originally known simply as "rugby football"; it was not until after a schism in 1895, which resulted in the separate code of rugby league, that the name "rugby union" came to be used for the game itself.
Rugby union was famously an amateur sport until the IRB declared the game 'open' in 1995, removing restrictions on payments to players.
Pre-formalization of the game[edit]
A ball-game resembling rugby football was a game played by ancient Greeks called episkuros (Greek: επίσκυρος). In Wales such a sport is called cnapan or "criapan," and has medieval roots. The old Irish predecessor of rugby may be caid. The Cornish called it "hurling to goals" which dates back to the bronze age, the West country called it "hurling over country" (neither should to be confused with Gaelic hurling in which the ball is hit with a stick called a hurley or hurl, not carried), East Anglians "Campball", the French "La Soule" or "Chole" (a rough-and-tumble cross-country game). English villages were certainly playing games of 'fute ball' during the 1100s. English boarding schools would certainly have developed their own variants of this game as soon as they were established - the Eton Wall Game being one example.
The invention of 'Rugby' was therefore not the act of playing early forms of the game at Rugby School or elsewhere but rather the events which led up to its codification.
The game of football which was played at Rugby School between 1750 and 1859 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 in a kind of enormous rolling maul. The innovation of running with the ball was introduced some time between 1859 and 1865. William Webb Ellis has been credited with breaking the local rules by running forwards with the ball in a game in 1823. Shortly after this the Victorian mind turned to establishing written rules for the sports which had earlier just involved local agreements, and boys from Rugby School produced the first written rules for their version of the sport in 1870.
Around this time the influence of Dr Thomas Arnold, Rugby's headmaster, was beginning to be felt around all the other boarding schools, and his emphasis on sport as part of a balanced education naturally encouraged the general adoption of the Rugby rules across the country, and, ultimately, the world.
