Rugby Union Football (or rugby as you probably know it) has come a long way. From the medieval Irish using inflated bladders as balls and arched wooden goal posts, to today’s oval leather balls and sophisticated laws such as the offside rule, the sport has certainly evolved over time.
In the 1800s, rugby was played as a form of recreation in many countries. At the time, it was simply called football, and an Englishman named Albert Pell is credited with introducing the game to Cambridge University, where he was a student at the time. Pell formed the first recorded football team, and other schools slowly began to adopt it.
However, each school used different rules for their own games until a set of rules was drawn up at Rugby School in 1845. Three years later, Cambridge came up with what would later become known as the Cambridge Rules.
Then, in 1863, the Football Association was founded, and the organization began to draw up rules to govern the game.
These early rules were aimed at preventing players from gaining an unfair advantage over their opponents. Players were only prohibited from running with the ball in their hands, and were also prohibited from kicking other players in the shins. These actions were completely normal and legal under the Rugby School and Cambridge Rules.
But not everyone was happy with these rule changes, and this led to many clubs leaving the FA to continue to play by the rules they had come to know and love. The FA, with its stricter rules, evolved into the football we know today, and the breakaway clubs formed the Rugby Football Union in 1871.
In 1895, another split occurred due to differences of opinion. Some teams split to form the Rugby League, and the Rugby Football Union later adopted the name Rugby Union to differentiate itself from the separate league. Although there are some differences in the laws, the two versions are fundamentally very similar and many people cannot even tell the difference between the two.
The first professional rugby match was played on 27 March 1871 in Edinburgh, Scotland, between England and Scotland. Scotland won the match.
The first international rugby competition was the Home Nations Championship, which began in 1883. The same year, the Melrose Sevens, the rugby sevens competition still played today, was inaugurated.
The first Rugby World Cup was organised in 1987 and was hosted by Australia and New Zealand, with New Zealand winning the inaugural competition. However, the first World Cup Sevens tournament was not held until 1993, and Rugby Sevens was not included in the Olympics until 2016.
Rugby union remained an amateur sport until the International Rugby Board declared it back in 1995, shortly after the World Cup, but it remains one of the oldest sports known to mankind.
