Rugby union

Rugby union refers to two types of the game rugby, rugby fifteens and rugby sevens. Rugby is a contact team sport that originated in England in the middle of the nineteenth century. The most popular form of the game, fifteens, is made up of two teams of fifteen players each who compete to pass an oval-shaped ball across a rectangular field, known as a pitch, with goalposts at both ends. The objective is to get the ball into the end zone to score a try, which is worth five points. The kicker then has the opportunity to kick the ball through the goalposts to score an additional two points.

Unlike rugby league, rugby union was originally amateur; it became professional in 1995.

Background

According to some sports historians, rugby originated in 1823. William Webb Ellis, an Anglican clergyman, born in the town of Salford near Manchester, introduced the game while attending the Rugby School at the University of Oxford. Rev. Ellis is credited with taking the ball in his hand and running with it across the field in total disregard to the rules of football as it was played at the time. Football at Rugby School permitted handling the ball but did not allow players to run with it in their hands toward the opposition’s goal.

In addition, football had no fixed limit to the number of players per side, and there were often hundreds of students taking part in the game whereas rugby was limited to a far smaller team.

Although there is very little evidence to support the William Webb Ellis theory, with little information to dismiss the claim, however, it has held onto its status and is now regarded as close to fact as possible. To prove the theory’s legitimacy, the International Rugby Committee has named the Rugby Cup the "William Webb Ellis Trophy."

Many earlier types of ball games were played in England. Going back as far as the fifth and sixth centuries, or the Middle Ages, players competed in a variety of different team matches in their local neighborhoods and villages. Games such as folk football, mob football, and Shrovetide football were played with an unlimited number of players fighting on opposing teams with the goal of moving an inflated pig’s bladder to a marker set up at each end of their town. These sports were eventually outlawed as unsafe and wasteful, and new rules for the game were implemented on August 28, 1845, which forbade playing football on highways and public land where most of those games took place. This ruling prevented the common man from playing the game, and the sport was moved primarily to the schools around the country.

The invention of rugby can be seen not only as an offshoot of football introduced by an innovative player running across the field holding the ball, but also as an outcome of the culture of Victorian England when a sense of competition and fair play as well as the need for rules and laws came together and helped the game develop and spread globally.

The first official men's National Collegiate Championship series for rugby in the United States did not start until 1980 despite college athletes having played the game for decades. The first Rugby World Cup was held in 1987 and was co-hosted by New Zealand and Australia. Since then, the tournament has taken place every four years at different locations worldwide.

Women's rugby is also played at the amateur and collegiate levels. The first recorded women's rugby union team began at Edinburgh University in 1962. The first Women’s Rugby World Cup took place in 1991, which has been played every four years since. The women's Five Nations was introduced in 1999, which was a group of member nations who formed a league. Eventually, this became the Six Nations, featuring international rugby union teams from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy and France.

Overview

In its early days, the game of rugby had several different versions depending on which (boarding) school was playing. British schools such as Rugby, Cheltenham, Shrewsbury, and Marlborough played a slightly altered game than they played at Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Charterhouse, and Westminster.

What started as a game played by schoolboys at upper class British high schools ended up as a union of men who formed clubs across the British Isles. Arthur Pell, an old rugbeian and a student at Cambridge, is credited with having formed the first "football" team at Cambridge University. In 1845, the Rugby Football Union was formed when three former Rugby School pupils met in a restaurant on Regent Street, London, in order to standardize the rules of play and eliminate some of the more violent aspects of the original Rugby School game; the standardized rules were called the "Cambridge Rules." In 1886, the International Rugby Football Board was formed by the unions of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, who proposed that a neutral board should agree upon and govern the rules of rugby football. That organization eventually became World Rugby, an organization of 133 member nations worldwide.

As with many sports, the goal in rugby is to score more points than the opposing team. Since rugby union is a contact sport, players can tackle an opponent in order to get the ball, as long as they stay within the rules. They can run with the ball or pass it to another player, but they are not allowed to pass it forward.

There is one referee and two touch judges (one on each side of the playing field, known as the "pitch") who decide how the rules are applied during the course of the game; the game begins when the referee tosses a coin to decide which team will kick off the play. The captain of the team that wins the toss gets to decide which end he prefers and whether the opposition or his side will kick off first.

A drop kick is taken from the middle of the halfway line, and the ball must be kicked forward at least ten meters from the kickoff. If it is not kicked forward at least ten meters, the opposition gets to choose between restarting the play, whereby players pack closely together heads down and attempt to gain possession of the ball (scrum) or restart the game on the halfway line after the ball has gone into touch (line-out).

If a penalty or drop goal is scored during the game, play is restarted with a drop kick from the halfway line. The kick is taken by the team that has lost the points.

There are two periods of forty minutes each in a rugby game with a maximum ten-minute interval between the two halves after which both teams change sides. The start and finish of each half is called by the whistle of the referee.

The ball must be an oval-shaped ball between 28 cm and 30 cm in length (approximately 11 to 13 inches) and weigh between 383 and 440 grams (approximately 13.5 to15.5 ounces).

Points are scored in the following ways:

A "try" is awarded five points when the ball touches down in the opponent’s goal area. Two points are added in a "conversion" when a kick after a try lands the ball through the goalposts, and three points are awarded for a penalty kick or a drop goal that makes it through the posts.

A "draw" is called for the match if both teams score the same amount of points, but sometimes extra play time is allotted to determine the winner of the game. This is referred to as a knockout competition.

After a team scores a try, it can add two further points by kicking the ball over the crossbar and between the posts from where the try was scored.

When a player kicks for a goal by dropping the ball onto the ground and kicking it on the half-volley, a drop goal of three points is scored.

Bibliography

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