[1] As early as 1875 a group of British Embassy employees played rugby on the Szabadság tér (Freedom Square) in Budapest.
[1] Like neighbouring Austria and the Czech Republic, rugby has tended to be strongest in the national capital Budapest (which is by far the largest settlement in the country, containing 20% of the population) - however, in 1981, it would spread into the town of Kecskemét.
[1] The former All Black scrum half Chris Laidlaw, writing at the end of the 1970s, saw rugby as a positive force in east-west relations at the time: Chris Laidlaw writing of the open secret of shamateurism in Soviet sport said: Hungary had its first international in 1990, shortly after the foundation of the national union.
[1] In the early 1990s, former Italian cap, Dr Giancarlo Tiziani was a major driving force in Austrian rugby.
Before his death in 1994, he tried hard to establish a Central European equivalent of the Five Nations between Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia.