Rugby union is a type of football played with an oval ball on a rectangular field. Rugby sevens was included in the Olympic sports.

The country in which this sport was born is considered to be England in the XVIII-XIX centuries. There is a legend that this sport arose during one of the football matches, in which one of the players took the ball in his hands and brought it into the opponent’s goal. Already in 1845, but in 1848 Cambridge approved its rules of the game. A rugby team consists of 15 players, and the number of each player corresponds to their role during the game. The distribution of players is also very important, as you need to put players in positions where they will succeed. The goal of the game is to land the oval ball in the scoring field or kick it over the goal crossbar within the area marked by the two posts, this indicates a score for the team that did it. Also, gambling fans love to bet on the new independent online casinos and that is a new online casino not on gamstop.

History of the Rugby

To better know the history of this sport, I suggest you read about its evolution over time.

Oddly enough, it is in the monarchical, prudent, and very intelligent England that rugby originates. The desire of the English to be stronger than the enemy, and to dominate him, gives rise to a strange entertainment in our time.

Kicking people’s heads seems to be the cruelest and most horrible, but that is exactly what “primitive rugby” was. Over time, balls appeared, and extremely large crowds threw through the streets of towns and villages without rules. They threw, caught, pushed, and did everything possible to get the ball on the opponent’s side. Obviously, these matches ended in massive fights. Therefore, during the reigns of Edward II, Edward III, and Richard II, strict laws were introduced against these actions and “mob football”, as this game was once called, because it, according to the kings and the elite, caused disorder and distracted the subjects from other, more necessary activities. Gradually, with each passing year, the game entered a more or less controlled framework and even began to be introduced in English educational institutions. It is quite possible that a part of the history of rugby belongs to the Italians. As far back as the Roman kings and the elite, used as entertainment and as a good means of military training “harpastum” – a game that is extremely similar to rugby, the essence of which was that divided into teams, the soldiers tried to get the ball into the “gate”, built of two spears buried in the ground. Back in the early AD, harpastum was learned on the islands of Britain. In the Middle Ages in Europe, there were a lot of games with the ball, which were very popular, and were something similar to modern football and rugby. It was necessary to send the ball to the opponent’s territory in any possible way. For example, in Florence, matches of “historical football” are still held to this day. The tradition dates back to 1530 when the Spanish King Charles V’s army surrounded the city, and the locals decided to hold a large-scale “football” match in Piazza Santa Croce to raise morale. It is on this square that every year on July 24, and in our time, competitions in “historical football” are held. It is possible that the English – fans of King Charles I, who left England – returning to their homeland, interested their countrymen in a new entertainment. The origin of modern rugby dates back to April 7, 1823, and is associated with the city of Rugby, which is located about 80 km from the capital of England. There was a football match between the teams of the local educational institution.

Crucial moment

At some point, the player, William Webb Ellis, trying to save his team from defeat, took the ball in his hands and ran to someone else’s goal, scoring a “goal”. For breaking the rules he was immediately excluded from the game. However, Ellis’s idea was adopted, and a kind of football appeared, in which the game was allowed to play with hands. Since then, the main trophy, for which the participants of the World Cup competition, is called Ellis. There is another view on this event. Thomas Hodges – the author of “Tom Brown’s School Days”, and the captain of the school team – claims that it was not William Ellis, but Jem Mackie who ran with the ball in 1838. And Ellis simply proposed the idea of running with the ball in his hands at the end of 1823. In October 1863, at a meeting of various schools and clubs in London, the final division into football and rugby football took place. In 1871, the Rugby Union was created, which established the first official rules of the game. In 1873, a similar Union appeared in Scotland, Northern Ireland, 1874 – Ireland, and in 1881 – Wales. In 1943, the International Amateur Rugby Federation was established. Rugby appeared in the Olympic arena in 1900 with the Olympic Games in Paris.