Like neighbouring Germany, Austrian rugby has a surprisingly long history, dating back to 1900 ,[3] but the game's English image meant that its development was hindered by the events of the early 20th Century, particularly the two world wars, and the rise of two major far right movements.
The post-war period has seen a revival in Austrian rugby, partly due to the large number of foreign military personnel who came to be based there.
[4] The London Irish player Spike Hughes wrote about the surreal world of 1960s Austrian rugby in the foreword to Michael Green's The Art of Coarse Rugby: Because the journey from Bucharest to Vienna took so long, it hadn't been thought worthwhile to play just one match, and as Hughes admits, many of the Austrians had had to be taken off in the previous two matches.
Before his death in 1994, he tried hard to establish a Central European equivalent of the Six Nations between Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia.
[3] Rugby union in Austria has begun to grow in recent years as they appeared in the 2008 European Nations Cup.