What is rugby?

The origin of rugby is reputed to be an incident when William Webb-Ellis picked up a soccer ball, during a game of football in 1823 and ran with it, at Rugby School, Rugby, England. Although this tale is likely to be apocryphal, the trophy played for every four years at the Rugby World Cup is named after him.

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.

Records of women's rugby go back over 100 years - the first mentions of the game being in New Zealand in 1891 and France ten years later. In the past 30 years the game has grown in popularity among female athletes, and, according to England's RFU, is now played in over 80 countries.

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