Rugby union is one of
the leading professional and recreational team sports in
England.
Rugby is
thought to have been created in England in 1823, when William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and
ran with it during a football match at the Rugby School
. In 1871 the
RFU was formed by 21 clubs, and the
first international match, which involved England, was played in
Scotland. The
English
national team compete annually in the
Six Nations Championship, and are
former world champions after winning the
2003 Rugby World Cup. The top domestic
club competition is the
Guinness
Premiership, and English clubs also compete in international
competitions such as the
Heineken
Cup.
History
Rugby School and foundation of early clubs
Rugby School
Rugby in
England is generally attributed to when William Webb Ellis "who with a fine
disregard for the rules as played in his time, first took the ball
in his arms and ran with it" in 1823 at the Rugby School, although modern scholars consider that this story
may be a myth. One of the earliest football clubs formed,
some claim it to actually be the first, is the Guy's Hospital Football Club
which was founded in 1843 in Guy's Hospital
, Southwark
, London
. The
club played an early version of rugby football and was formed by
old boys of the Rugby School. Subsequent clubs established in this
period include Dublin University Football Club in 1854 and the
Blackheath Rugby Club in
1858.
Football Association meeting and the subsequent forming of the
RFU
The Football Association was formed
at the Freemasons'
Tavern
, Great Queen Street, on Lincoln's Inn
Fields
, London on 26 October
1863, with the intention to include the most
acceptable points of play under the one heading of football.
However, disagreements over what was being excluded led the
Blackheath Club to withdraw from the association which was followed
by a number of other clubs. In 1870,
Richmond F.C. published an invitation in 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".
In January
of the following year, 21 clubs meet at the Pall Mall
Restaurant
and the Rugby
Football Union (RFU) was founded.
First international and the schism in rugby
1871 engraving of the game.
On
March 27,
1871, the
first ever international match took place, involving the
English rugby team and
the Scottish.
Scotland
won the match, which was played at Raeburn Place
in Edinburgh
. In 1884, England opted not to join the
International Rugby
Football Board which was formed by Ireland, Scotland and Wales,
as they thought they should have greater representation on the
board as they have the larger number of clubs.
By the late 1800s, the issue over
broken
time in rugby had become important, particularly in the North
of England, where a larger working class played rugby compared to
the south, thus their work and injuries they received whilst
playing came into conflict with the rules of amateurism. With
mounting pressure regarding player payments and
veiled professionalism, on
August 29,
1895 at a meeting
at the George Hotel, Huddersfield, 21 clubs met to form the
Northern Rugby Football Union
and thus resigned from the RFU. The game of rugby league was formed
from the disaffected clubs.
During this period, rugby was played between counties similar to
the system of first-class cricket in England now.
In 1907, Cornwall
won the county tournament and went on to represent
Britain at Rugby
union at the 1908 Summer Olympics. As the system was not
particularly popular it soon ended.
All amateur leagues were outlawed by the Rugby Football Union in
September 1900.
Twickenham and centenary celebrations
The 1910
opening of the RFU's new home at Twickenham
heralded a golden era for English rugby
union. During the
First World
War, the Five Nations Championship became suspended in 1915 and
it was not resumed until 1920. One hundred and thirty three
international players were killed during the conflict. In 1923, a
century of rugby was celebrated at the Rugby School, which saw an
England and Wales XV play a Scottish-Irish team.
World War II
For duration of
World War II the ban on
rugby league players was temporarily lifted by the RFU. Many played
in the eight rugby "Internationals" between England and Scotland
which were played by Armed Services teams. The authorities also
allowed the playing of two “Rugby League vs. Rugby Union” fixtures
as fundraisers for the war effort (both matches were won by the
rugby league teams playing rugby union).
In 1958, long after
the William Webb Ellis had become engraved as a legend in the
history of rugby union, his grave was finally located by Ross McWhirter in the French
town of
Menton
near the border with Monaco
.
Formation of leagues
The RFU had long resisted leagues competitions, as it was thought
that they would encourage player payments, thus most club matches
were only organised friendlies, with competitions such as the
County Cups and County Championship existing also. In 1972 the RFU
sanctioned a knock-out competition, which was revamped in 2005 into
a competition for top-tier English and Welsh sides now known as the
LV= Cup. The league evolved over
time since starting in 1987 when the Courage Leagues were formed, a
league pyramid that had more than 1000 clubs playing in 108
leagues; each with promotion and relegation.
Professionalism
The Heineken Cup was formed in 1995 as a competition for twelve
European clubs. Today the competition fields sides from England,
France, Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Italy. The century old
competition for the European rugby powers became the Six Nations
Championship in 2000 with the addition of Italy.
In November 2008 a proposal was made and adopted by the
RFU to create a fully professional
second tier of club rugby, to be called the
Championship. It is intended to replace
National Division One and is
due to begin in 2009.
Governing body
The Rugby Football Union are the governing body for rugby union in
England.
Competitions
- See also English
rugby union system
Guinness Premiership
The 12-team
Guinness
Premiership is the top level of competition, it is fully
professional but has a salary cap in place. The
RFU Championship (formerly National
Division One) and
National League
1 (formerly National Division Two) are the next rungs down. The
Championship is a fully professional league for the first time in
2009–10; League 1 is semi-professional. Below this there are many
regional leagues. Attendances at club rugby in England have risen
strongly since the sport went professional. Some clubs have good
all seater grounds in the 10,000-25,000 capacity range; some have
older grounds which are still partly terraced, and others play in
council-owned joint-use
stadia. Some clubs rent stadia from football clubs.
See:
A summary of English
leagues.
Heineken Cup
The
Heineken Cup is a European club
competition between the best teams from England, France, Ireland,
Wales, Scotland and Italy. It is viewed by some as the top prize in
European rugby for all teams.
LV= Cup
The
Anglo-Welsh Cup, now known for
sponsorship reasons as the
LV= Cup, is
the successor to a tournament founded in the 1971–72 season as the
RFU Club Competition. It was originally a national knock-out
competition for English club teams, and went through several
sponsored names in the next quarter-century. Starting in the
2005–06 season, it was changed into a competition for Premiership
clubs plus the Welsh sides competing in the Celtic League, now the
Magners League. The
EDF National Trophy was founded in 2005–06
as a new knock-out competition solely for English clubs, but
Premiership sides do not take part. The strongest Premiership teams
take part in the
Heineken Cup and the
rest of the Premiership takes part in the
Amlin Challenge Cup.
British and Irish Cup
The
British and Irish Cup is a
competition founded in 2009–10 by all four Home Unions for
lower-tier professional and semi-pro teams throughout Great Britain
and Ireland. It features the 12 teams from the RFU Championship,
six top teams from the
Welsh
Premier Division (the level below the Magners League), three
Irish provincial "A" sides, two top sides from the
Scottish Hydro Electric
Premiership, and a side drawn from players in Scotland's
national rugby academy. The 24 teams are divided into four pools,
each with a single round-robin format. The pool winners then
advance to knockout semi-finals followed by a final.
Daily Mail Cup
The
Daily Mail Cup is the English
school's rugby union cup
competition. The final is held at Twickenham
Stadium. Competitions are held at the U18 and U15
age group levels. At each age group there are two competitions, a
cup for the better schools and a vase for lesser schools.
Middlesex 7s
The
Middlesex 7s is the premier
club-level
rugby sevens event held in
England (note, however, that international sides have taken part on
occasion).
London Sevens
National sevens teams compete annually in the
London Sevens at Twickenham, which is the
next-to-last event in each year's
IRB Sevens World Series.
Derbies
The following games are considered
derbies.
Popularity
Rugby's recent success is in part due to
England's recent 2003
Rugby World Cup success. In terms of average attendance, the
Guinness Premiership is the third best attended club competition in
England behind The Premiership and The Championship. The highest
club attendances at
Guinness
Premiership matches are starting to become similar to some of
the lower attended matches in football's Championship, with game
attendances now averaging at 10,000 compared with 17,000 in the
football Championship (figures from season ending 2005). Some
teams- such as Sale Sharks- have (or plan to) move to new, bigger
capacity stadiums. Others such as Bath are planning make extensions
to their existing stadium.
Historically rugby union was a participatory sport rather than a
spectator sport in England and attendances at club games were low.
Leicester Tigers for example
averaged less than a hundred spectators in the 1970s. However,
attendances at Twickenham for the national team have always been
very high. Games in the
Six
Nations Championship and
Rugby World
Cup have always been shown on network TV. Many people watch
these games but don't follow club rugby, mainly due to the fact
that the pay-TV Sky Sports owns the rights to the game broadcasts,
and highlights are rarely shown on network television. The average
England rugby fan is not necessarily very knowledgeable as a
consequence, many people watch national games with little knowledge
of the laws of the game.
Statistics
According to the
International
Rugby Board England has 1,900 rugby union clubs; 6,060
referees; 362,319 pre-teen male players; 698,803 teen male players;
121,480 senior male players (total male players 1,182,602) as well
as 11,000 senior female players.
Demographics
Rugby union has often been considered, somewhat pejoratively, a
'posh' game. This may be historically linked to the split between
Northern teams and the rest of the rugby fraternity over 'broken
time payments', i.e. professionalism. This split led to the
development of the separate sport of
rugby
league.
The amateur ethos made it difficult for players who could not
afford to take time off work to play away games or to go on tour -
an integral part of the rugby tradition.
Rugby union in many
parts of England is associated with fee-paying independent schools
such as Stonyhurst
College
or Sedbergh School
who have historically provided many of the national players.
It is also commonly played at
Grammar
schools, but
Comprehensive
schools in much of the country tend not to play the game.
Research from 2003 stated that the majority of spectators are from
the AB1 demographic group with a gender ratio of approximately 80%
male and 20% female at live domestic professional matches.
[266549] However, this is a general picture of the
sport across the country as a whole and, in some parts of the
country, the game has widespread grassroots support.
This is particularly
true of the Westcountry, especially in Cornwall and in the cities of Bath
and Gloucester
, where the game is substantially more popular than
football without significant class differentiation . In the
Midlands, the game competes with football and the larger clubs,
such as
Leicester Tigers,
Northampton Saints and
Coventry, have considerable fanbases and
strong traditions.
Due to
the split with most of the Yorkshire and Lancashire clubs, rugby
union remained more popular in the South and the Midlands than the
North of England, although an outpost in the North East remained,
such as through the Gosforth,
West
Hartlepool R.F.C.
and Northern
clubs. This is changing somewhat with the
relative success of
Sale Sharks and
Leeds Carnegie. Although four of the
teams in the Premiership have historic links with London, three of
these have now moved to neighbouring towns, and only
Harlequins now play in the capital albeit in
the outer suburb of Twickenham. At an amateur level, however, rugby
remains strong in the London area.
Both the
Welsh and Scottish Rugby Unions have expressed an interest in
establishing Magners League teams in
London, most probably the existing London Scottish and London Welsh clubs. The English RFU has
not yet responded.
Media
English rugby union receives extensive coverage from major media
outlets. Currently
Sky Sports covers the
Guinness Premiership and the
BBC covers
the Six Nations.
Current trends
Following
England Rugby's
success with capturing the 2003
Rugby World Cup, popularity of rugby
union in England practically doubled according to research that was
conducted as part of MORI’s
SportsTracker.
Prior to the 2003 World Cup, research estimated that around 18 per
cent of all British citizens had an interest in rugby union
(conducted in January 2003), ranking the sport eighth in popularity
in England. In December 2003, shortly after England's win at the
World Cup, the percentage was revealed to be 27 per cent, pushing
the sport to second in England. A lot of the popularity was
attributed to
Jonny Wilkinson's
famous
drop goal in the latter stages of
the final at the 2003 World Cup. A rise in match attendances, as
well as interest in schools was noted.
Whilst
rugby union was officially an
amateur sport, many rugby union players came to play rugby league.
In recent years this trend has reversed and some rugby league
players have crossed codes to play union.
[266550]
The national team
England playing Wales in the Six
Nations.
England have enjoyed success from time to time with more
Six Nations Championship titles and
Grand Slams than any other nation. England contest the
Calcutta Cup with Scotland and the
Millennium Trophy with Ireland as part of
the Six Nations Championship. They were World Champions from
2003-2007 and also made the finals of the 1991 and 2007 World Cups.
The
IRB currently ranks
England at 5th out of 95 union-playing countries.
They play their home
games at Twickenham in Middlesex
. Swing
Low, Sweet Chariot is a song associated with the national rugby
union team even though it was originally sung by black slaves on
the cotton fields in the south of the U.S.A. Every four years the
British and Irish Lions go
on tour with players from England as well as Ireland, Scotland and
Wales.
See also
References
- Collins, Tony (2009); A Social History of English Rugby
Union, Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-47660-7.
- Richards, Huw A Game for Hooligans: The
History of Rugby Union (Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh, 2007, ISBN 9781845962555)
-
http://www.rfu.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/RFUHome.News_Detail/StoryID/21277
External links
and Saracens
, all four clubs have their historic roots in
London, and all have their headquarters within the London commuter belt.
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