The History and Origins of Rugby Union
94William Webb Ellis's Tombstone
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William Webb Ellis and the Origins of Rugby
In 1823, during a game of soccer at Rugby School in England, 16 year old William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it towards his opponents' goal line. The reaction of his fellow players or any officials is not recorded; but the advantages of playing the game in this natural fashion were obvious to Ellis's schoolmates who followed his example. And so the game of rugby was born.
Or so, at least, goes the popular story. Unfortunately, many argue that the legend is probably apocryphal, pointing out that games that involved running with the ball had existed centuries earlier. This is true. But it is also true, at least, that the earliest form of football with much similarity to rugby as we know it today, did originate at Rugby School around Ellis's time.
Probably closer to the truth is the somewhat different version of the tale that appears on the English Rugby Union's site. The type of football played at Rugby School in Ellis's time was not soccer, but a game with a mixture of both soccer and rugby rules. Handling the ball was prohibited unless the ball was airborne, when the player was permitted to catch it. After catching the ball he would stand still, as did all the other players, and had the option of kicking it wherever he chose, or placing it on the ground and kicking for goal.
It should also be noted that in those days at English Public Schools the pupils often developed their own rules for the games of football they played. So it is possible that Ellis, during some game of football, did indeed run with the ball, setting an example soon followed by others.
Whatever the case, the story of William Webb Ellis is too good to have been abandoned; and he even has an official headstone (see picture above) in the grounds of Rugby School. with this inscription:
THIS STONE
COMMEMORATES THE EXPLOIT OF
WILLIAM WEBB ELLIS
WHO WITH A FINE DISREGARD FOR THE RULES OF FOOTBALL,
AS PLAYED IN HIS TIME,
FIRST TOOK THE BALL IN HIS ARMS AND RAN WITH IT,
THUS ORIGINATING THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURE OF
THE RUGBY GAME
A.D. 1823
By the 1840s running with the ball had become the norm, and by the 1870s rugby clubs had sprung up all over England and in the colonies. But different rules were being used by different clubs, and a meeting was held in January 1871, attended by representatives of 22 clubs, to resolve the situation. It was at this meeting that the Rugby Football Union was founded.
This meeting on 26 of January 1871 was initiated by Edwin Ash, Secretary of Richmond Club, who submitted a letter to the newspapers which read: "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".
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. This task was completed and approved by June 1871. And about the same time the Scottish members of the Union challenged the English to a match. This, the first international match between England and Scotland, took place at Raeburn Place in Edinburgh on 27 March 1871, resulting in a win to Scotland by one goal and one try to one goal.
The "Great Schism"
A commitment of the union was a strict adherence to the principles of amateurism. However, in 1893 reports of some players in the north of England receiving payments for playing reached the committee, and it attempted to obtain evidence. This came through a complaint from the Cumberland County Union that another club had lured one of their players away with monetary incentives. The Union set up an inquiry, but was warned that if the club involved was punished, all the chief clubs in Lancashire and Yorkshire -- from which a large proportion of international players were drawn -- would secede from the Union.
Nevertheless, the inquiry went ahead and the club concerned was suspended. Two general meetings resulted at which the Northern Unions attempted a compromise resolution that would allow payment for players when playing football instead of working ("broken time"). But the resolution was defeated, and, true to their word, in August 1895, twenty-two northern clubs seceded from the Union and formed the Northern Union, later to become known as the Rugby League.
It was a very bitter severance of rugby into two rival camps and acrimony continued for something like a hundred years. At first - and until 1995 in fact -- a major distinguishing feature of the two codes was that rugby league was a professional sport, and rugby union strictly amateur. This though has tended to obscure the fact that, despite their common origins, the two games have evolved into two quite different sports. Since the split in 1895, both codes have made their own distinct rules, and a game of rugby league is almost immediately distinguishable from a game of union.
Rugby Union Becomes Professional
Apart from this rugby union is no longer an amateur sport. The process by which it became professional is a story in itself. Essentially the IRB The International Rugby Board -- the governing body of rugby union -- has been dominated by worthy English gentlemen who adhered implacably to their cherished amateur principles. But as the demands on top players grew -- increased media attention, amount of training required, and so on -- increasing pressure was applied, by the Southern Hemisphere unions in particular, to allow player payments.
Along with this was an ever-increasing degree of sham-amateurism. While straight payments may not have been openly accepted, it was obvious that top players in some countries received various benefits and perks from playing the game -- through player trust funds, other roundabout methods, or even through direct under-the-table cash payments.
The IRB finally capitulated to the inevitable, and in August 1995 rugby union became fully professional.
Links to Sites about Rugby History
- Rugby Football History
A site dedicated to the History of rugby, including the olympics, a rugby timeline, and the history of various tournaments. - The New Zealand Rugby Museum
Information relevant to both New Zealand and international rugby history. - Historical Rugby Articles
Links to a variety of articles about the history and origins of rugby. - Wikipedia: Rugby Union
Covers the history of the game and how it is played. A useful introduction. - The New Zealand Natives' Rugby Tour of 1888/89
A history of the New Zealand Maori rugby team's tour of Great Britain and Australia in 1888/89.
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eh? and your from NZ? don't you get around Jack...you have entire Maori communities who could help you get your rugby history tika. Still got that euro focus eh, where everything begins syndrome. Lets here you spout about how crooked and underhand and deceitful NZ rugby really was here up until professionalism, all those players who for decades got paid under the table, but snigger-sniggered whenever they were asked to confirm or deny. The rugby culture is sick and for decades was full of wink wink administrators who condoned player payments and underhand deals. The rugby unions let Maori suffer by being racially excluded from touring South Africa for most of the 1900s. and yet you still prefer the euro views of history...theres still books out promoting that mythical kid Will who supposedly started rugby. Your in NZ in my opinion you should start doing some real research and then don't be too scared to write it up, cordially yours Manu
My article is about the history and origins of Rugby. Rugby didn't start with William Web Ellis, but it did start at the English Public schools.
Isn't the history of New Zealand rugby something else again?
Don't you think the following paragraph from my article is a fair assessment of the state of "amateur" rugby generally before real professionalism?
"Along with this was an ever-increasing degree of sham-amateurism. While straight payments may not have been openly accepted, it was obvious that top players in some countries received various benefits and perks from playing the game -- through player trust funds, other roundabout methods, or even through direct under-the-table cash payments."
Where is your disagreement with what I have said? How am I prefering a "euro" view of history?
I'm not promoting the mythical kid as having begun rugby. We all agree that that story is apocryphal and I am trying to help debunk it. If it even needs debunking.
I'm afraid I don't see any real point in which we disagree. I also made this point:
"Apart from this rugby union is no longer an amateur sport. The process by which it became professional is a story in itself."
It's not just a story in itself, it's several books. If you'd like to do an article or two about sham-amateurism in New Zealand and elsewhere, I'd be keen to read them. I recall a funny comment by David Lange who was raising questions about sham-amateurism in New Zealand rugby. An interviewer pointed out to Lange that Frank Bunce was a rubbish collector. "Yes", said Lange, without hesitation, "and I look forward to the day in the near future when Frank becomes a company rep."
huh? you must be an ostrich sorta person. Perhaps a rugby clonite. Paying players, arranging cushy jobs, accomodation, food and cars was rife in NZ before professionalism, not just the top players benefitted as you insinuate (as in All Blacks) but even provincial players and this was evident in the metropolitan areas in all senior divisions. Everyone knew how deceitful the rugby fraternity was yet the rugby culture blossomed in our wink wink society. Your comment from Lange typifies this.
Hiding taxable incomes, the promotion of the 'black market' and deceitful monetary practices stemmed from NZs rugby culture. The rugby cultural legacy in this regard is still rife today across a broad spectrum of our society. It is endemic because so many people, millions over the years, have played rugby and been influenced by its unwritten moral code.
Yet the rugby union were harsh with rugby players who played league, basically the players who went from rugby to league were those who didn't want to be receiving money for their rugby playing and having to be deceitful about it. Take Joe Karam, he had a family who he didn't want to pass deceitful role modelling onto his kids, so he openly switched to rugby league so that he could openly be paid for it - even though he would have received far more from underhand payments if he had stuck with rugby. Those were the honest rugby players with morals.
The Rugby union fraternity tried to exterminate rugby league in our country. And going by all the waffle about rugby origins, with Cameron and co, still perpetuating how rugby started with the lily white boys in Blimey, particularly Will Ellis, the rugby fraternity, including you Stu, have no idea about researching sports history and continue to perpetuate that Anglicised origin stuff. The poms were blatant thieves who stole ideas and made them appear to be of their origin.
It reminds me about the Americanisation of volleyball, it didn't start in the US as they promote. The returned US serviceman stole the Indonesian/Asian forms of volleyball which are very skillful and dumbed them down to create the form of volleyball common today. Similarly with basketball which was a rip-off of the Central/South American ball playing games. Naismith tried heaps of games in his gym which nobody liked playing. Then a fellow presbytarian doing her their stint in Central America sent a magazine article to him which featured the get-the-ball-thru-the-hoop game......the rest is history. So think carefully before you perpetuate the waffle about rugby which comes from a particularly old fashioned, eurocentric world view - all you are doing is perpetuating colonisation on Tuwharetoa here who know better, and by doing this colonist inspired crap you are role modelling to future white boys & girls that it is ok, white is always right, and that if enough people lie, as you and your cohorts do, then that is reality.
Cordially Manu
Oh, fair go, old mate ;-) Did I insinuate that it was only All Blacks who benefited? No, I did nothing of the sort. That was your inference and not a fair one. "Top Players" is not very specific, perhaps; but have I denied that Top Provincial (or even top club players) never got benefits? Whadda you want me to do mate: spell it all out in pages of detail naming names and giving specifics of payments and other "arrangements"? Even if I did, I suspect that if I so much as missed one tiny example you'd point to it as evidence that I was an ostrich.
I get the feeling that you'd find fault with whatever I say. I have been intending to add to the article with some other stuff, but whether that would pacify you I don't know.
Look what I wrote:
"Unfortunately, many argue that the legend is probably apocryphal, pointing out that games that involved running with the ball had existed centuries earlier. This is true. But it is also true, at least, that the earliest form of football with much similarity to rugby as we know it today, did originate at Rugby School around Ellis's time. "
Rugby type games -- running with the ball to force it in an opponents area -- have existed since Roman times and probably earlier. The first cave men probably played rugby like games.
Rugby as we play it today originated -- was codified by -- the Brits.
What do you want me to say? That it all started with some Maori kid who first picked up a Moa bladder and charged at his opponents' with it under his arm?
I have read on a women's rugby site that the kid's name was actually Jane, and that she only picked up the ball because it belonged to her, and her mother was calling.
I really don't understand what your gripe is. And I wish that if you think I have my facts wrong or missed something you focused on those matters rather than personal stuff.
Look:
"if enough people lie, as you and your cohorts do, then that is reality."
I may be an idiot who couldn't do proper research to save my
soul; I may be misquided: But I am not lying (and I don't have any cohorts). For right or wrong, better or worse I believe what I'm saying is true.
And I haven't even contradicted a lot of what you are saying. I said that sham-amateurism was rife and you attack me on the grounds that sham-amateurism was rife.... Geeeezzz
The Union vs League business is another story too. I have said nothing to contradict your points about that. There have been whole books written about it -- was one called "The Forbidden Sport". The harshness towards League was not confined to New Zealand. That started with the Brits too. With the British class system, to be specific. Union, of course, was dominated by the upper class Brits from the Public Schools and league was the game of the Working Man. That League was ruthlessly supressed is not a great secret.
I think the game of rugby is amazing it is not only a sport but your team becomes a family. It is really amazing how the game originated thank god for William.
Well, William is given more credit than is due him, but what you say about the family atomosphere of rugby is true. More so at the lower levels these days. I'm afraid that professionalism may be the process of causing some major changes at the top levels.
Jenna, I do not deny that rugby, like many things in our society that are essentially detrimental, does not have "good" points.
However your eurocentric referral to young Will, even if a humourous connotation, again displays ignorance and a belief system far from the one Maori hold.
The mongrel mob could easily parrot your shallow thoughts. Mob members also refer to their gang in positive terms and that they are family. They too get into the booze, sex and drug culture that proliferates in rugby, the only difference is because rugby carries all the 'sought after' British (white) ways of thinking and acting, a.k.a Pakeha NZ culture, it has been legalised.
Maori ball games, in fact all games, were made illegal centuries ago and the European ones were permitted.
When you talk of the belief system Maori hold you really mean the beliefs and attitudes that some Maori hold. Many Maori are avid supporters of rugby, and there are many Pakeha who are not.
But I think the real issue here is whether rugby causes these ills that have been described, or merely reflects the macho Eurocentric culture we have. Would our society really have been any different if our national sport had been soccer or basketball, or whatever? I doubt it.
Graft, corruption and these other ills are not matters that are confined to rugby, and are not matters that were unknown before the advent of rugby, or matters that are altogether unheard of in other areas of life.
A lot of the matters raised here seem to relate more to the love of money than to the love of rugby. And the love of money, described in the Good Book as the root of all evil, is not a sin confined to Pakeha.
As far as the drugs, booze, and sex culture is concerned, you could describe, say, skiing, in that fashion, or teenage culture in general, even.
But there are a very wide variety of people in New Zealand who play or support rugby. By no means all of them are into drugs, booze, and promiscuous sex.
I have never heard of a skier putting the boot in to another, or of stomping another, eye gouging or even head high tackling another???? have you? or are you just putting up a smoke screen and delving into disinformation? I work on the ski fields and they are pristine compared to your paddocks of shame.
Fair enough that youth risk take with involvement around booze, violence, sex and drugs...but have a look at the age groups playing rugby..take off your rose tinted glasses around your rugger mates at your rugby hangouts. Many are far older than the youth you refer to and many have families and are role modelling their rugby culture behaviour, on and off the field, to their kids and condoning the sick rugby culture ...the one you praise so much.
Your right many Maori do play rugby...if you knew your history they had no choice about playing contact sports because ALL of their ball sports, such as ki-o-rahi, were banned by your ancestors! and the socially acceptable sport to prove your manhood in NZ was/is...you guessed it rugby! What has rugby done for Maori? know anything about the processes of socialisation? or about the white supremist South African regime? were Maori backed then? You and I know that racist values don't just disappear, they go underground. What are Maori players now, simply entertainers/gladiators for...you guessed it a largely white middleclass/upperclass willing to shell out the $s to watch Maori bash themselves about - gee they've been trained well alright!
Try asking your local coppers, the ones not in your chummy rugby club ;-) about the huge numbers of rapes and assaults that occur as a result of your "normal" rugby culture behaviour.
You can't keep going on offloading the woes that rugby causes in our society to other sports codes. that really is the ostrich syndrome you displayed earlier on if you recollect. Its time you fellas take responsibility for what you perpetuate in our society.
If you want to consider an alternate view to your biased one checkout the blog on here, under the title:
'NZ RUGBY MORALLY CORRUPT'
Your arguments remind me of drunk drivers, always minimising the real dangers of their behaviour.
"You can't keep going on offloading the woes that rugby causes in our society to other sports codes. that really is the ostrich syndrome you displayed earlier on if you recollect. Its time you fellas take responsibility for what you perpetuate in our society."
I did nothing of the sort. Nothing of the sort. It is becoming tiresome the way you seem to twist what I say. Even when I agree with you, you somehow manage to pretend that I don't.
You mentioned the 'drugs, booze, and sex culture of rugby'. I'm saying that that culture is not confined to rugby and to say that rugby -- or anyother sport -- is the cause of it, is naive. Whether skiing is a body contact sport involving violence is neither here nor there.
You are simply ignoring the point I'm making. You, I believe, are the one with your head in the sand. Do you seriouly believe that without rugby there would be no drugs, booze, and sex culture in New Zealand?
I am saying that sport doesn't cause these matters -- sport just reflects what ills there are already there in society. This is quite plain and easily understandable. Twisting my words to suggest that the ills are caused by sport, but by sports other than rugby is misrepresenting me.
Sports are not the CAUSE of colonialist oppression. They may reflect it and be an INSTRUMENT of colonial oppression, but they are not the cause of it.
If there had been no rugby there still would have been oppression. If there had been no rugby there still would have been racism.
I'm looking forward to the film starring Anna Paquin that I believe will be shown here within a few months. It details the oppression and outright slaughter, in many cases, that the American Red Indians suffered at the hands of the colonialist oppressors. And I don't think there was a single rugby player in the US congress. Ok, I have put that in a jesting fashion. The point is valid, I believe. Racism and oppression are not CAUSED by sport.
Racism and the oppression of minorities is embedded in many cultures, but to change it you need to change society itself at a more fundamental level than I believe you seem to think. Changing rugby won't change our societies ills. Changing our societies ills would alter rugby.
ok obviously there is a lot of truth to the rugby counter culture thing but if we weren't smashing into each other every weekend wouldn't there be more violence out on the street? think about it
What a great article
"WHO WITH A FINE DISREGARD FOR THE RULES OF FOOTBALL"
And that has been the culture of folk who play rugby
With a fine disregard for anyone.
that is not true
i think paul has a point
me 2
There was a great program on tele about how racist and corrupt rugby is. It focused on the using of Maori and Pasifika peoples to showcase the game to the world, yet the administration is locked up with pakeha.
Look at this years world cup, the 'dark' countries eg Fiji, Tonga, Samoa given stuff all ops to prepare and play matches to harden into test mode, yet still doing remarkably well despite being hobbled by directives from white administrators.
Nothing has happened since 1987 to assist 'dark' countries to succeed. Their players are used and abused while the administrators grow rich.
rugby union is cool
Thanks for a very informative article about a great sport.
stuart mate..that manu .. is a tosser...clearly
working
chicka says:
15 months ago