Rugby football
[3] Rugby football spread to other English public schools in the 19th century and across the British Empire as former pupils continued to play it.
For example, New Zealand had Kī-o-rahi, Australia marn grook, Japan kemari, Georgia lelo burti, the Scottish Borders Jeddart Ba' and Cornwall Cornish hurling, Central Italy Calcio Fiorentino, South Wales cnapan, East Anglia Campball, Ireland caid, an ancestor of Gaelic football, and France had La Soule.
[12] The existing rugby union authorities responded by issuing sanctions against the clubs, players, and officials involved in the new organization.
[13] Walter Camp proposed at the US College Football 1880 rules convention that the contested scrummage be replaced with a "line of scrimmage" where the team with the ball started with uncontested possession.
Second and third tier unions include Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Fiji, Georgia, Germany, Hong Kong, Kenya, Namibia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Samoa, Spain, Tonga, the United States, Uruguay and Zimbabwe.
It is the national sport in New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Georgia, Wales and Madagascar, and is the most popular form of rugby globally.
International Rugby League is dominated by Australia, England and New Zealand, though Tonga and Samoa have threatened this hegemony regularly since 2017.
Currently there are two major domestic professional leagues globally: In Canada and the United States, rugby developed into gridiron football.
During the late 1800s (and even the early 1900s), the two forms of the game were very similar (to the point where the United States was able to win the gold medal for rugby union at the 1920 and 1924 Summer Olympics), but numerous rule changes have differentiated the gridiron-based game from its rugby counterpart, introduced by Walter Camp in the United States and John Thrift Meldrum Burnside in Canada.
Furthermore, unlike American and Canadian football, neither league nor union players wear any sort of protection or armour.
In a line-out, parallel lines of players from each team, arranged perpendicular to the touch-line, attempt to catch the ball thrown from touch.
In England, rugby union is widely regarded as an "establishment" sport, played mostly by members of the upper and middle classes.
Another exception to rugby union's upper-class stereotype is in Wales, where it has been traditionally associated with small village teams made up of coal miners and other industrial workers who played on their days off.
In Australia, support for both codes is concentrated in New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory (55% of the population), though rugby league is far more popular.
The same perceived class barrier as exists between the two games in England also occurs in these states, fostered by rugby union's prominence and support at private schools.
[28] Exceptions to the above include New Zealand (although rugby league is still considered to be a lower class game by many or a game for 'westies' referring to lower class western suburbs of Auckland and more recently, southern Auckland where the game is also dominant), Wales, France (except Paris), Cornwall, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Scottish Borders, County Limerick (see Munster Rugby) and the Pacific Islands, where rugby union is popular in working class communities.
Nevertheless, rugby league is perceived as the game of the working-class people in northern England[29] and in the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland.
[28] In the United Kingdom, rugby union fans sometimes used the term "rugger" as an alternative name for the sport (see Oxford '-er'), although this archaic expression has not had currency since the 1950s or earlier.
There is a strong tradition of rugby union in France, particularly in the Basque, Occitan and Catalan areas along the border with Spain.
Richard Lindon and Bernardo Solano started making balls for Rugby school out of hand stitched, four-panel, leather casings and pigs' bladders.
Owing to the more aggressive nature of the game, rugby clothing, in general, is designed to be much more robust and hardwearing than that worn for association football.
