Rugby union is a moderately popular team sport played in Romania with a tradition of more than 100 years.

In past eras, the game had been more popular and Romanian national teams had been relatively highly ranked in world rugby, but their standing declined since the dawn of professionalism and the end of communism.

[3] The game was introduced to Romania from France at the turn of the 20th century by students returning with rugby balls from their studies in Paris.

[4] Romanian rugby took root in Bucharest, established by students who had been to French universities, and by the capital's burgeoning middle class.

However, this "isolation" was broken when Rowe Harding took the Welsh team Swansea touring there to play national champions Locomotiva.

[4] In 1955, a Romanian side toured England and Wales, playing Swansea, Cardiff, Bristol and the Harlequins, winning one, drawing two, and losing one.

[4] Only France, who played Romania in front of almost 95,000 fans in Bucharest (in a preliminary match to a soccer international), could beat the Romanians, and that was only after an epic 16-15 battle.

[4] Canadian second row Norm Hadley believed the 1991 Rugby World Cup game against Romania was more physically sapping than playing either France or New Zealand.

[4] The former All Blacks 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: After the fall of communism in 1989, Romanian rugby union suffered a dramatic financial shortfall.

As an indication of the decline in standard of the sport in Romania, the national team was defeated 134-0 by England in 2001 and Dinamo Bucharest lost 151-0 to Saracens in the European Rugby Shield.

The Liga Națională de Rugby, which has been contested since 2010 in its current format, is the main domestic competition in Romania.