Sport historians tell us Rugby was "invented" in 1823 during an intramural football match, at a private boarding school in Rugby, England. A young, William Webb Ellis became so frustrated by his inability to kick the ball, picked it up and ran towards the goal. Of course the story is most likely apocryphal, since games involving running with a "ball" in hand had existed for centuries before that. At any rate William Webb Ellis's deed is commemorated by a stone on the Rugby school grounds with the inscription

THIS STONE COMMEMORATES THE EXPLOIT OF WILLIAM WEBB ELLIS WHO WITH A FINE DISREGARD FOR THE RULES OF FOOTBALL, AS PLAYED IN HIS TIME, FIRST TOOK THE BALL IN HIS ARMS AND RAN WITH IT, THUS ORIGINATING THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THE RUGBY GAME

Cambridge University immediately adopted the game, popularized it and made local rules. The game grew popular at area schools and in 1871, ten years after the common rules of soccer were set, the first Rugby Union was founded in London and firm rules of the game were established. As the Commonwealth spread the rugby code was taken to the four corners of the Earth. It corresponded with nostalgic colonials abroad, keep to capture their youth and hence became a social event married with muscular Christianity soon metamorphosing into main football codes we enjoy to this day, but also so others that may surprise you. The first college football game ever in America, Rutgers vs. Princeton in 1869, was rival fraternity brothers having a go at the English schoolboy game of rugby. Almost all precepts of the American game are based upon rugby and it took until the mid 1880s before Yale football coach, Walter Camp Americanised the game by inventing the gridiron, along with the concepts of downs and blocking. In 1880 the scrum was replaced by a line of scrimmage, drawing emphasis from the free-running characteristic of the game. The game continued to play with rugby rules until 1905 where the publication of photographs of a harsh game between Sarthmore and Pennsylvania created a stir. President Theodore Roosevelt insisted on reform of the game to lower the brutality with threat of abolishing the game by edict. In 1906 the forward pass was introduced to the United States game. The rules of rugby died and the game of American football was born. When Dr. James Naismith, was looking to develop a new indoor game to keep his football players fit through the bitter Midwest winters, he came up with a neat innovation and called the game basketball. Rugby continued to flourish elsewhere, with special regard to Britain, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

Rugby has had a few famous people pull on a jersey and join the rough and tumble of the game for the leather elbow patch crowd. Did you know Boris Karloff was a standout forward in his native Hungary. When the big man established himself as Mr Terror in Hollywood (1936) he founded the Southern California Rugby Football Union and it is there to this day. Another enthusiast was His Holiness Pope John Paul, a solid flanker in his day, representing his native Poland in international play. Teddy Kennedy played at Harvard and David Niven and Richard Harris were rugby men both on and off the big screen. Whilst at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Bill Clinton was known to "strap on the boots" from time to time. Ask Richard Burton (Liz Taylor's man) if he would prefer to play Shakespeare's Hamlet on stage at the Royal Albert Hall, or represent his beloved Wales in a rugby match versus England before 80,000 fans at Twickenham, Richard Burton would chose rugby, everytime.

The game is played in well over one hundred different countries with several million people as active participants. The governing body for rugby is the International Rugby Football Board (I.R.F.B.) commonly referred to as the IRB, founded in 1886. The I.R.F.B. is responsible for deciding international fixtures, revising the laws of the game and other general matters related to rugby such as amateur status of players.

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