The Birth of Rugby The game of football has a long history in England and prior to 1845 when three boys at Rugby School published the first set of written rules, football had probably been played at Rugby school for two centuries The rules traditionaly were created by the pupils and were changed with every new intake of students. The masters at the school had no input. Any alteration to the rules, such as wether you could carry or run with the ball were often decided before the start of the game. There were no formal rules for Rugby Football at the time when William Webb Ellis was at the school (1816-1825) and the story of the boy “who with a fine disregard for the rules as played in his time, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it” in 1823 is now legendary. This story first appeared in 1876, some four years after the death of Webb Ellis, and is attributed to a local antiquarian and former Rugbeian Matthew Bloxam. Bloxam was not a comtemporary of Webb Ellis and vaguely quoted an unnamed person, possibly Bloxhams brother who was a contemporary of Webb Ellis or Bloxhams father who was a Teacher at Rugby School, as informing him of the incident that had supposedly happened 53 years earlier. The Old Rugbeian Society has dismissed the story as unlikely since an official investigation in 1895. However, the trophy for the Rugby Union World Cup is named “Webb Ellis” in his honour (as is Ellis Park in Johannesburg a major international rugby union stadium), and a plaque at the school commemorates the ‘achievement’. Around Britain and Ireland, a number of other clubs formed to play games based on the Rugby School rules. One of these, Dublin University Football Club, whom Richard Lindon was Pincipal ball supplier, founded in 1854, is the world’s oldest surviving football club. The Blackheath Rugby Club, in London, founded in 1858, is the oldest surviving non-university rugby club. Richard Lindon (1816-1887) Inventor of the Rugby Ball, the rubber inflatable bladder and the brass hand pump |