In January of the following year, 21 clubs meet at the Pall Mall Restaurant and the Rugby Football Union (RFU) was founded.

With mounting pressure regarding player payments and veiled professionalism, on 29 August 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.

For duration of World War II the ban on rugby league players was temporarily lifted by the RFU.

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.

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.

From 1995 through to 2014, the top-level European club competition was the Heineken Cup, contested by the best teams from the Six Nations countries of England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales.

The Anglo-Welsh Cup, known by several sponsored names during its history, was the successor to a tournament founded in the 1971–72 season as the RFU Club Competition.

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 Pro14.

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 British and Irish Cup was a competition founded in 2009–10 by all four Home Unions for lower-tier professional and semi-pro teams throughout Great Britain and Ireland.

The Middlesex 7s is the premier club-level rugby sevens event held in England (note, however, that international sides have taken part on occasion).

The North of England, in which Rugby league is dominant, does not have an established derby rivalry in the top tier; the two northern outposts of Sale Sharks and Newcastle Falcons represent the fifteen-man game in the region.

In the past, Leeds Carnegie, Doncaster Knights and Rotherham Titans have contested Yorkshire derbies, while Liverpool St. Helens and Orrell R.F.C.

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.

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.

In recent years this trend has reversed and some rugby league players have crossed codes to play union.

[6] The Newcastle Falcons and Sale Sharks are the only Northern teams in the Premiership, whereas Yorkshire Carnegie has also competed there previously.

The percentage of people declaring to be interested in rugby union in England has been fairly constant over the period 1996–2005, for which we have data.

To the question whether they watch rugby union on TV, 21% of sampled people answered positively in 2005, up two points relative to 1996 (19%).

[citation needed] 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.

This is particularly true of the West Country, especially in Cornwall and in the cities of Bristol, Bath and Gloucester, where the game is more popular 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.

England contest the Calcutta Cup with Scotland and the Millennium Trophy with Ireland as part of the Six Nations Championship.

"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.