How Rugby Started

Rugby started at the Rugby School, which is located in the town of Rugby, in the Midlands of England.
The story that a student at Rugby by the name of William Webb Ellis was playing whatever version of football was being played at that time (1823), ran forward with ball in hand. There is a plaque at Rugby School that commemorates this. It says: "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 FEATURES OF THE RUGBY GAME A.D. 1823"
The story is a lot more complicated than that. You have to look at the evolution of the various codes of football. Today we have:
Rugby Union
Rugby League - often called League, an offshoot of rugby.
Association Football - Soccer. Soccer came from the word association. In the late 19th century in England, the two dominant football codes were called soccer and rugger. Neither looked very much like the current versions of rugby and soccer.
Australian Rules. Came from Gaelic, which is played by a small number of people in Australia Gaelic Football - played in Ireland
Gridiron or American Football – The game’s only really played by the Americans.

There is a saying that goes: Soccer is a gentlemen's game played by ruffians, Rugby is a ruffians' game played by gentlemen, Rugby League is a ruffians' game played by ruffians.

People played games with inflated pig (or cow or some other animal) bladders through most of history. The games were usually played once a year at some sort of harvest festival. In 19th century England, people (at least the rich) had more leisure time. A direct benefit of the industrial revolution.
The English were very organized, good at writing rules and had an extensive school system (for the upper classes).
There were boarding schools that boys were sent to around age 8 through what we would now call high school. After graduating, it was off to Oxford or Cambridge. The public schools include Rugby, Eton (where Prince William and Harry go), Harrow, Charterhouse, etc.

In 1857, Thomas Hughes wrote a book about life at Rugby School called "Tom Brown's Schooldays". The most famous alumnus of Rugby School is a mathematician name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He is better known for a book he wrote under the name Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
At all the various public schools, the students played some kind of a game with a ball but just within the school, not against other schools. At Rugby, the games were played on a large field called the Close. The William Webb Ellis plaque is on a wall next to the Close. On one side of the Close, there is a large grassy mound with trees. The boys would gather there after the game and write rules. They would talk about the game and decide what changes would have to be made. What came out of Rugby School was a set of written rules to play their version of football.

Most, if not all, of the public schools played some sort of a kicking game that can be lumped together as football. All had their own rules, influenced by the field they could play on, the number of students, etc. In most, if not all, versions of football around 1800, you could use your hands. You could catch a ball that had been kicked. You could not run with it. You had to kick it yourself or place it for someone else to kick.
Teams were big and not always even - you could have a game of 60 against 200 players.

What happened between 1820 and 1830 at Rugby School was that some players began to run forward with the ball before kicking it. It was OK to run backward before kicking but running forward was considered unfair.
Keep in mind, there was no referee. The students made up the rules and played as they wanted. After 1830, running became more common. It was legalized in 1841-2. Once running became accepted, it also was OK to tackle the person with the ball or "hack" him (kick him in the shins).
Rugby School published its Laws of Football on August 28, 1845.

The public school students saw no reason why they could not keep playing their games once they got to University. After University, they formed clubs to keep playing. The problem was, each school had its own set of rules. At both Cambridge and Oxford, there were competing football clubs. Rugby made bigger inroads at Oxford. Cambridge developed its own set of rules that led to soccer.

The Football Association was formed in November 1863 at the Freemason's Tavern in London. They were to develop a universal football code. The first draft included rules that allowed the distinctive features of the Rugby game, specifically running forward and allowing a player who is running forward with the ball to be charged, held, tripped, hacked, etc. (However, the rules adopted by the FA were largely based on the Cambridge rules and excluded the Rugby rules. So clubs who played under the Rugby rules stayed out of the FA and continued to develop their own code.

On January 26, 1871, the Rugby Football Union (RFU) was formed. This led to a consistent set of rules for all clubs that played a version of football under the Rugby School laws. On March 27, 1871, the first International Rugby match was played. Scotland beat England in Edinburgh by a goal and a try to a try (I don't think points were set yet). There were 20 players on each team (15 today). Rugby football spread to all the "Home Countries" - England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland - then on to the colonies.

Rugby remained an amateur sport until 1995. It became an open game (i.e. the players could be paid) after the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Nothing great about amateurism - it was designed to keep the working class and other riff raff out of the games played by the upper classes. The working class could not afford to take the time off from work to play sports. This became an issue in the 1890's.

Clubs in the north of England wanted to give their players "broken time payments" - pay them what they would have gotten by working instead of playing rugby. The RFU said no and in 1895, the northern clubs split away to form the Northern Football Union. This developed into the game called Rugby League. League is popular in the north of England and in Australia.
It has been having a hard time since Rugby Union became professional.
League has 13 players (Vs 15 in Union). In League, there is no contest for the ball. After a player is tackled, his team keeps possession and restarts play. In league you have 6 tackles to score otherwise the other team gets the ball. After the fifth tackle, a team deep in its own end will kick the ball to the opposition. It is a static stop/start game.

In Rugby Union, once a player is tackled, he or she must release the ball and the two teams vie for possession. In most case, either a ruck or maul is formed. In Union, play is continuous and does not stop with the tackle. In league, there are no lineouts. A lineout is how play is restarted in union after the ball goes into touch (out of bounds). League uses a depowered version of the scrummage (with six players versus 8 in union) to restart play for a ball that goes into touch. In union, the scrum is used to restart play after minor infractions.

The first Rugby World Cup was played in Australia and New Zealand in 1987. New Zealand beat France 29-9 at Eden Park, in Auckland, New Zealand to win. The trophy is called the Webb Ellis Cup. Wales took third, beating Australia 22-21. In the world cups since then, 1991 - Australia 12 England 6 (at Twickenham, London, England); Third Place - New Zealand 13 Scotland 6 1995 - South Africa 15 New Zealand 12 (in overtime at Ellis Park, Johannesburg, South Africa); Third Place France 19 England 9 1999 - Australia 35 France 12 (Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, Wales); Third Place - South Africa 22 New Zealand 18.

Other significant dates:
1843 - The first official club, Guy's Hospital Rugby Club (London,England), formed.
1863 - The first recorded club game - Richmond Vs Blackheath - played in London
1869 - First intercollegiate football game in the USA - played under something close to the Cambridge rules adopted by the Football Association.
Rutgers beats Princeton 6-4.
1870 - First rugby game in New Zealand
1873 - Scottish Football Union established

1874 - First rugby game in America - between Harvard and McGill University of Montreal, Canada, played in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A rugby coach at McGill by the name of James Naismith later goes on to invent basketball in 1891.
1882-1883 - First Home International Championship played (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales). Becomes a regular annual event in
1898-99 (halted for the first and second World Wars) . France joins the competition in
1910. Gets tossed in 1931 by the Home Nations who say France is paying its players and they do not want to travel in any event. France rejoins in 1939 but play is halted by WW2. Italy joins the competition in 2000 and it becomes the Six Nations.
1886 - International Rugby Football Board (IRB) established. First members were Ireland, Scotland and Wales. England joins in 1890. Today has 91 member countries
1891 - Walter Camp of Yale resolves the differences between the various football codes in the USA by making up his own set of rules - introduces the line of scrimmage, cuts the team down to 11 players and narrows the field to 53 1/3 yards (rugby is 75). Thus American football is born.
1892 - Amos Alonzo Stagg arrives at the newly opened University of Chicago. Stagg came from Yale and brought along Camp's football rules. American football spreads rapidly. UofChicago is a founding member of what becomes the Big Ten conference. The Yale code quickly becomes dominant in most of the USA except on the West Coast where rugby survives. It survives enough to provide a team for the USA in the Olympics.
1924 - Rugby is played in the Olympics for the last time. USA wins its second consecutive gold medal in rugby by beating France 17-3 in front of a hostile crowd in Paris. None of the big rugby countries participate.
October 13, 1972 - a plane carrying 45 people (primarily the traveling squad to the Old Christians Rugby Club) takes off from Montevideo, Uruguay en route to a game in Santiago, Chile. It crashes high in the Andes Mountains. 72 days later, 16 survivors are rescued. They stayed alive by eating those who had died. Leads to a book and movie ("Alive") and to the bumper sticker "Rugby players eat their dead"
1975 - The United States of America Rugby Football Union and the Chicago Area Rugby Football Union are established
1976 - The Eagles, the USA National team, plays it first match. Lose to Australia 24-12 on Jan 31, 1976 in Anaheim. CA. Next game is on June 12. Lose to France 33-14 at New Trier West High School in Wilmette.
1987 - First Rugby World Cup
1991 - First Women's Rugby World Cup - USA beats England 19-6 in Wales to win
1993 - First Rugby Sevens World Cup. Sevens is a version of the game with only 7 players instead of 15. England beat Australia 21-17 at Murrayfield in Edinburgh, Scotland to win the Melrose Cup. The trophy is named after the town in the Scottish Borders where the game of sevens started as an off season training tool.
1994 - Second Women's Rugby World Cup - England beats USA 38-28 in Scotland in the final
1995 - Rugby is made an open game, the Declaration of Amateurism is dropped from the Laws of the Game. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) gives provisional recognition to the IRB as the international governing body for rugby.
1996 - First Annual TriNations Tournament held - South Africa, New Zealand and Australia
1996 - First Epson Cup tournament held - USA, Canada, Japan and Hong Kong. In 1999, Hong Kong drops out, Samoa, Fiji and Tonga join and the tournament becomes the Epson Cup.
1997 - IOC gives permanent recognition to the IRB Fiji win the Rugby Sevens World Cup with a 24-21 win over South Africa in Hong Kong
1998 - Third Women's Rugby World Cup, New Zealand beats USA 44-12 in Amsterdam, Holland to win
2001 - Rugby Sevens World Cup to be held in Argentina (In January)
2002 - Women's Rugby World Cup to be held in TBD
2003 - Rugby World Cup - Final to be played at the Olympic Stadium in Sydney, Australia
2008 - target date for Rugby to return to the Olympic Games

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