Rugby union has a long history. Some claim that a form of football can be traced back to pre-imperial China about 2,500 years ago. In various forms, football is known to have existed in ancient Greece and moved west across Europe with the Romans.
Varied forms of football developed in British villages, but it was the English public school that formalised the rules of these games. Boys wanted to test themselves against others, but in order to do so, they needed to play the same game. Headmasters and teachers came to believe that football games would provide training in physical strength, discipline and manliness. Rules were necessary to ensure the rough games were played in a restrained, civilised manner.
Not the founder
At Rugby School a plaque reads: ‘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 feature of the rugby game A.D. 1823.’ However, there is little evidence of this, and the claim did not surface until more than 50 years later. It is thought that Rugby School advanced the story in the 1890s to establish ownership of the origins of the game.
Public school origins
Eventually two distinct games of football emerged: rugby, named for Rugby School in Warwickshire where it was played, and the association game (soccer). This was named for the Football Association, formed by old boys of schools such as Eton and Westminster.
Initially the most distinctive difference between the two games was that in association football goals were scored by kicking the ball under a bar, and in rugby by kicking it over the bar. (A try was simply an opportunity to ‘try’ for a kick over the goal.) Eventually the greatest difference came to be how the ball was propelled: rugby rules allowed for handling and running with the ball and association only allowed kicking and heading. Under rugby rules, the ball could only be passed backwards, but in the association game, it could be passed in any direction.
New Zealand origins
Several matches under rugby rules were played in Whanganui in 1869. Reports of rugby being played in New Zealand earlier than this, especially in Wellington, have not been verified.
Meanwhile, a young New Zealander, Charles John Monro, had been sent to Christ’s College in north London for his education in the late 1860s, and played rugby there. At that time football in New Zealand was a mixture of Australian rules and various old English games.
When Monro returned home in 1870 he persuaded the Nelson club, formed two years before, that rugby was better than the hybrid football it was playing. Monro and a club founder, Robert Tennent, suggested to Nelson College’s headmaster, Frank Simmons, a Rugby School old boy, that the school switch to the rugby rules. Simmons agreed, and a game of rugby between College and Town was played on 14 May 1870. On 12 September that year Nelson travelled to Wellington to play at Petone – the beginning of regular annual contests between the two communities. Rugby now had a foothold.
