Rugby began, by tradition, at Rugby School in 1823 when a pupil named William Webb Ellis picked up the ball during a football match and ran with it. The story is almost certainly a myth, invented decades later, but the World Cup trophy is named after him anyway.
Two codes
Britain has two separate rugby sports with different rules, different governing bodies and different heartlands.
- Rugby union — fifteen players a side, with lineouts, rucks and mauls. Strong in the south of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and the private school system.
- Rugby league — thirteen players a side, faster and more open, with a six-tackle rule instead of contested possession. Concentrated almost entirely in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria.
The split
In 1895, twenty-two northern clubs broke away from the Rugby Football Union at a meeting in Huddersfield. The dispute was about “broken time” payments — compensating working-class players for the wages they lost by playing on Saturday afternoons.
The RFU, run by southern gentlemen for whom amateurism was a point of principle and who did not need the money, refused. The northern clubs left and formed what became rugby league, and the two games have been separate ever since. Union only turned professional in 1995, a full century later.
The class dimension is not incidental — it is the whole explanation, and it still shapes where each code is played.
The Six Nations
Union’s great annual tournament, played over five weekends in February and March between England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France and Italy. Ireland fields a single team drawn from both the Republic and Northern Ireland, which is one of the more quietly admirable arrangements in sport.
Winning all five matches is a Grand Slam; beating all three other home nations is a Triple Crown. England versus Wales and England versus Scotland — the latter played for the Calcutta Cup since 1879 — carry considerably more historical weight than the rugby alone would explain.
No padding
Rugby players wear a jersey, shorts, boots and a gumshield. There are no helmets and no shoulder pads. The game is continuous — no stopping the clock, no substitution platoons — and tackles must be made below the shoulders, with high tackles severely punished.
Concussion is now the sport’s central problem. Former professionals have brought legal action over long-term brain injury, and the laws have been repeatedly tightened, with tackle height lowered at community level. It is the most serious issue rugby faces.
The culture
Union has a strong tradition of players and supporters drinking together after matches, and crowds are not segregated — away fans sit among home fans, which is unthinkable in football. The old joke is that football is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans and rugby a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen, and both halves are argued about with some heat.
In Wales, union is closer to a national religion than a sport, and the singing before a match at the Principality Stadium is worth hearing even if you have no interest in the game.