History of rugby union

For most of its history, rugby was a strictly amateur football code, and the sport's administrators frequently imposed bans and restrictions on players who they viewed as professional.

For example, New Zealand had Ki-o-rahi, Australia marn grook, Japan kemari, the Scottish Borders Jeddart Ba' and Cornwall Cornish hurling, Central Italy Calcio Fiorentino, East Anglia Campball.

He described the activities of London youths during the annual festival of Shrove Tuesday: Numerous attempts were made to ban football games, particularly the most rowdy and disruptive forms.

King Edward II was so troubled by the unruliness of football in London that, on 13 April 1314, he issued a proclamation banning it: In 1531, Sir Thomas Elyot wrote that English "Footeballe is nothinge but beastlie furie and extreme violence".

[citation needed] Football games that included ball carrying continued to be played over the century, right up to the time of William Webb Ellis's alleged invention.

[10] At the sixth meeting, on 8 December, Campbell withdrew the Blackheath Club, explaining that the rules that the FA intended to adopt would destroy the game and all interest in it.

[11] The 21 clubs and schools (all from London or the Home Counties) attended the meeting: Addison, Belsize Park, Blackheath (represented by Burns and Frederick Stokes the latter becoming the first captain of England[12]), Civil Service, Clapham Rovers, Flamingoes, Gipsies, Guy's Hospital, Harlequins, King's College, Lausanne, The Law Club, Marlborough Nomads, Mohicans, Queen's House, Ravenscourt Park, Richmond, St Paul's, Wellington College, West Kent, and Wimbledon Hornets.

[15] The England team was captained by Frederick Stokes of Blackheath, that representing Scotland was led by Francis Moncrieff; the umpire was Hely Hutchinson Almond, headmaster of Loretto School.

[citation needed] Early forms of rugby football were being played in the Canadas and other nearby British colonies from 1823 onwards, in towns such as Halifax, Montreal and Toronto.

Students under the guidance of the teacher Edward Hill Ullrich were the ones who then founded the rugby department of the Heidelberger Ruderklub von 1872/Heidelberger Flaggenklub was established.

[39] National president Juárez Celman was particularly paranoid after the Revolution of the Park in the city earlier in the year, and the police had suspected that the match was in fact a political meeting.

[47] Rugby sevens was initially conceived by Ned Haig, a Jedburgh butcher who moved to Melrose, and David Sanderson as a fund-raising event for a local club in 1883.

[citation needed] As 1923 approached, there were discussions of a combined England and Wales XV playing a Scottish-Irish team in celebration of when William Webb Ellis picked up the football and ran with it in 1823.

[citation needed] In 1939, the FFR was invited to send a team to the Five Nations Championship for the following season, but when war was declared, international rugby was suspended.

[citation needed] After the defeat of France in 1940, the French Rugby Union authorities worked with the German collaborating Vichy regime to re-establish the dominance of their sport.

South Africa, who had not been allowed to compete in the first two tournaments, won the final, beating the All Blacks 15–12, the winning score coming from a drop-goal by Joel Stransky.

[citation needed] The 1999 Rugby World Cup was held in Wales and was won by Australia, who defeated France in the final after the latter had come from behind to record a shock win against tournament favourites, the All Blacks, at the semi-final stage.

In a closely fought game, which went into extra time, Australia narrowly lost to England, thanks to a last-minute drop goal by Jonny Wilkinson.

[citation needed] The breakthrough team in that competition was Argentina who started with a narrow win over France in the opener, and defeated Ireland to finish atop their pool.

Ultimately, it was decided that the Pumas would be steered toward a future place in the Tri Nations, and they would join that competition in 2012, at which time it was renamed The Rugby Championship.

In 1906, the South Africans objected to the selection of black England international James Peters when he turned out for Devon; but were persuaded to play by officials.

They were eventually able to get backing for the competition from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, with a contract totalling $US 550 million for ten years of exclusive TV and radio broadcasting rights.

With professional club games every weekend, Australian rugby league has maintained its dominance over union, especially in its traditional heartlands of New South Wales and Queensland.

[citation needed] The many smaller unions across the globe have struggled both financially and in playing terms to compete with the major nations since the start of the open era.

In England whilst some teams flourished in the professional era others such as Richmond, Wakefield, Orrell, Waterloo and London Scottish found the going much harder and have either folded or dropped down to minor leagues.

In the other Home Nations, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the professional era had a traumatic effect on the traditional structure of the sport, which had been based around local clubs.

The last of these expansions spread Super Rugby's geographic scope outside of its founding countries (South Africa, Australia, New Zealand) for the first time, adding new teams in Argentina and Japan.

The most significant changes to the structure were a reduction in the number of clubs taking part in the top competition from 24 to 20, plus the introduction of a play-off to determine one place in the Champions Cup.

[citation needed] Following several years of tension within the SANZAAR consortium and knock-on effects from COVID-19, the 2020s saw major changes to the structure of international club rugby.

[citation needed] In the southern hemisphere the traditional rugby powers of South Africa and New Zealand formed their Unions before the end of the 19th century.