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RUGBY FOOTBALL
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Rugby football refers to sports descended from a common form of football developed at Rugby School. The two major sports are rugby league and rugby union. American football also originated from Rugby football.
Rugby league is played both as a professional and amateur sport in Ireland, France, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. It is regarded as the national sport of Papua New Guinea. There are semi-professional and amateur competitions of rugby league which take place in France, Russia, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Serbia, Lebanon, South Africa, Japan, Canada, the United States, Fiji, Cook Islands and Tonga.
A Rugby player
Rugby union, also a professional and amateur game, is dominated by eight "major" unions: France, Australia, England, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, Wales and Scotland. Rugby union is a major sport played nationwide in each of these countries. Rugby Union is the national sport in New Zealand and Wales.
Numerous "minor" unions include Argentina, Canada, Fiji, Georgia, Italy, Japan, Namibia, Romania, Samoa, Spain, Tonga, the United States and Uruguay. In Malaysia, rugby union is played by campus students. Rugby union ranks as the national sport of Pacific countries such as Tonga, Fiji, and Samoa.
Many of the Rugby league positions have similar names and requirements to Rugby union positions but there are no "flankers" in rugby league.
An old saying goes "football (soccer) is a gentleman's game played by ruffians, and rugby is a ruffian's game played by gentlemen". In most rugby-playing countries, rugby union is widely regarded as an establishment, historically amateur, sport: many private schools and grammar schools play rugby union. By contrast, rugby league has traditionally the reputation of a working class, professional, pursuit. A contrast to this ideology is evident in the neighbouring unions of England and Wales. In England the sport is very much associated with the public schools system. In Wales Rugby is associated with small village teams consisting of coal miners and other industrial workers playing on their days off.
Because of the nature of the games (almost unlimited body contact with little or no padding), the rugby world frowns on unsporting behaviour, since even a slight infringement of the rules may lead to serious injury or even death. Because of this, governing bodies enforce the rules strictly.
Rules
Distinctive features common to both rugby games include the oval ball and the ban on passing the ball forwards, so that players can gain ground only by running with the ball or by kicking it.
Set-pieces of the union code include the scrum, where packs of opposing players push against each other for possession, and the lineout, where parallel lines of players from each team, arranged perpendicular to the touch-line (the side line) attempt to catch the ball thrown from touch (the area behind the touch-line).
In the league code, the scrum still exists, but with greatly reduced importance. Set pieces are generally started from the play the ball situation which has meant that rugby league has evolved into faster and more attacking game with a greater emphasis on running with the ball in hand, passing and scoring tries.
The main difference between the two games, besides league having teams of 13 players and union of 15, comes after tackles. Union players contest possession following the tackle: depending on the situation, either a ruck or a maul occurs. League players do not contest possession: play is continued with a play-the-ball.
Scoring in both games occurs by achieving either a try or a goal. A try (at goal) involves grounding the ball over the goal line at the opponent's end of the field. A goal results from kicking the ball over the crossbar between the upright goalposts. Three different types of kick at goal can score points: the goal kick after a try has been awarded (which if successful becomes a conversion); the drop kick; and the penalty kick. The points awarded for each vary between the games.
Rugby School
History
The legendary story/myth about the origin of Rugby football—whereby a young man named William Webb Ellis "took the ball in his arms [i.e. caught it] and ran" while playing Rugby School's already distinctive version of football (not to be confused with association football, which was codified much later) in 1823—has little evidence to support it. Pundits have dismissed the story as unlikely since it was first given the School's seal of approval following an official investigation by the Old Rugbeian Society in 1895. However, the story has entered into legend, and the trophy for the Rugby Union World Cup bears the name of "Webb Ellis" in his honour (as does Ellis Park in Johannesburg, a major international rugby union stadium), and a plaque at the School commemorates the "achievement".
Various kinds of football have a long tradition in England and football games had probably taken place at Rugby School for 200 years before three boys published the first set of written rules (in 1845). At the time, a set of rules would be agreed between two teams before a match. Teams which competed against each other regularly would tend to agree to play similar rules.
Rugby football has strong claims to the world's first and oldest football club: the Guy's Hospital Football Club, formed in London in 1843, by old boys from Rugby School. (Although there is still a rugby club attached to Guy's Hospital, so few records of the original club survive that it is impossible to determine if there is any continuity.) Around the Anglosphere, a number of other clubs were formed to play games based on the Rugby School rules. One of these, Dublin University Football Club, founded in 1854, is probably the world's oldest surviving football club in any code. Other old rugby clubs include: Edinburgh Academical Football Club (1857/58], the oldest documented club in the UK); Blackheath Rugby Club (allegedly founded in 1858, although some sources suggest that the club did not start playing rugby football until 1862); and Liverpool St Helens Football Club (1858).
The Blackheath club also features in the history of association football (soccer): as Blackheath Football Club, it became a founder member of the Football Association (FA) in 1863. However, Blackheath withdrew from the FA just over a month after the initial meeting, when it became clear that the FA would not agree to rules which allowed running with the ball in hand (a fundamental part of rugby) and hacking (legal tripping). Other rugby clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA. Interestingly the clubs that did not join the FA and continued to play Rugby Football dropped the tripping rule and outlawed it.
By 1870 about 75 clubs played variations of the Rugby School game in Britain. Clubs playing varieties of the Rugby School game also existed in Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. However, they had no generally accepted set of rules: the clubs continued to agree rules before the start of each game. On January 26, 1871, 22 clubs founded the Rugby Football Union (RFU), leading to the standardisation of the rules for all rugby clubs in England. Soon most countries with a sizeable rugby community had formed their own national unions.
Games based on rugby football became immensely popular in North America. However, by the 1880s these games had rapidly diverged from the laws of rugby used in most countries, and they became instead the basis of both Canadian football and American football. Nevertheless, the origins of the North American codes of football left lingering traces: the Canadian Football League's predecessor originally bore the name of the Canadian Rugby Football Union from its founding in 1884. Canadian football, was frequently known as "rugby" until the middle of the 20th century. On the setting up of the modern CFL in the late 1950s, it assumed control of the Grey Cup from an organisation that still called itself the Canadian Rugby Union (now Football Canada, the country's amateur umbrella organisation for Canadian football). Only in 1929 was the Canadian national rugby union formed — the predecessor of Rugby Canada.
In 1886, the International Rugby Board (IRB) became the world governing body and law-making body for rugby. The RFU recognised it as such in 1890.
The 1890s saw a clash of cultures between working men's rugby clubs of northern England and the southern clubs of gentlemen, a dispute revolving around the nature of professionalism within the game. On August 29, 1895, 21 clubs split from the RFU and met at the George Hotel in Huddersfield in Yorkshire to form the Northern Rugby Football Union, commonly called the Northern Union.
For clarity and convenience it became necessary to differentiate the two codes of rugby. The code played by those teams who remained in national organisations which made up the IRB became known as Rugby Union. The code played by those teams that played "open" rugby and allowed professionals became known as Rugby League.
NRFU rules gradually diverged from those of Rugby Union, although the name Rugby League did not become official until the Northern Rugby League was formed in 1901. The name Rugby Football League dates from 1922.
A similar schism opened up in Australia and in other rugby-playing countries. Initially Rugby League in Australia operated under the same rules as Rugby Union. But after a tour by a professional New Zealand team in 1907 of Australia and Great Britain, and an Australian Rugby League tour of Great Britain the next year, Rugby League teams in the southern hemisphere adopted Rugby League rules.
In 1948 a meeting in Bordeaux set up the Rugby League International Federation (RLIF) to oversee Rugby League world wide. From this meeting the first "Rugby World Cup" was played in France in 1954.
On August 26, 1995 the IRB declared Rugby Union an "open" game and removed all restrictions on payments or benefits to those connected with the game. Culture
Because of its long adherence to amateurism, an ethic considered to have discouraged working class players, rugby union often has a reputation as a middle-class and upper-class game. Exceptions to this occur in New Zealand, Wales, the Borders region of Scotland, the county of Cornwall in England, and the Pacific Islands, where rugby union remained popular in working class communities. Rugby league retains great popularity among working-class people in the English counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire, and in the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland.
In the United Kingdom, rugby union fans sometimes use the term "rugger" as an alternative name for the sport (though less so nowadays than previously). Those considered to be heavily involved with the rugby union lifestyle — including heavy drinking and striped jumpers — sometimes identify as "rugger buggers". Retired rugby union players who still turn up to watch, drink and serve on committees rank as "alickadoos" or, less kindly, as "old farts".
Rugby league supporters sometimes call themselves "treizistes", reflecting the French title of their sport (rugby à treize). The epithet occurs almost universally in France, but its use has also spread to English-speaking countries.
Australians fall into three camps when it comes to naming the two codes of rugby: in New South Wales and Queensland, which represent over half the population, people usually refer to rugby union simply as "union" and to rugby league simply as "rugby league" or "football". (The same perceived class barrier as exists between the two games in England also occurs in these two states, fostered by rugby union's prominence and support at elite private schools). However, in the southern states, such as Victoria, "football" means Australian Rules Football, and there is no popular differentiation between the two kinds of "rugby". Areas in which all three codes are popular, especially the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory, and the Riverina, generally use the names "league", "union" and "Aussie rules" to avoid confusion.
In Australia a popular show called "The Footy Show" screens weekly during the NRL season.
New Zealanders generally refer to rugby union simply as either "football" or "rugby" and to rugby league as "rugby league", "football" or "league". In New Zealand, playing football has a reputation as the epitome of manliness for both Māori and non-Māori, as symbolised by a haka (war dance) at the start of important games. Kiwis see rugby as the accepted substitute for military heroism and an excellent training ground for soldiering. If (as the Duke of Wellington allegedly said) Britain won the Battle of Waterloo on the playing-fields of Eton, New Zealand long saw its role in the British Empire as intimately connected with the football field. Popular Kiwi mythology sees the encouragement of New Zealand rugby in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the Imperial reaction to declining fitness in Britain's industrial slums. In the county of Cornwall in England, it is still the norm for boys to play rugby (union) not 'soccer' and when the team occasionally gets to Twickenham for the Counties final it will be filled with supporters wearing the black and gold of the Cornish colours.
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