Rugby’s best-known founding story, of a schoolboy picking up the ball in 1823, is a legend; the documented history starts with written rules at Rugby School in 1845, and South Africa now hold a record four World Cups.
The story that William Webb Ellis created rugby by picking up the ball at Rugby School is apocryphal, according to Wikipedia’s history of rugby union. A plaque commemorates him, but the story first appeared in 1876, four years after Webb Ellis died, and an official investigation in 1895 dismissed it as unlikely. The documented history begins in 1845, when the first written rules were set down at Rugby School.
The sport was organised in 1871. The Rugby Football Union was founded at a meeting of 21 clubs in London on 26 January 1871, according to the history. The first international match was played on 27 March 1871 at Raeburn Place in Edinburgh, and Scotland beat England. The International Rugby Football Board was formed in 1886 by Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and England joined in 1890.
A dispute over money then split the sport. On 29 August 1895, at a meeting at the George Hotel in Huddersfield, 20 clubs from Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire decided to resign from the RFU, because players who missed work to play were not compensated, according to the same history. That break, known as the Great Schism, created rugby league.
Rugby union stayed strictly amateur for about a century, and anyone who accepted payment or played rugby league was banned from the union game. Professionalism was made legal in 1995, according to the history. The period between the split of 1895 and 1995 is exactly 100 years, a count by Delima News.
The game spread throughout the British Empire by the late 19th century and influenced other football codes, including Australian rules football, American football and Gaelic football, according to the history.
A global tournament came late. The first Rugby World Cup was held in 1987, co-hosted by New Zealand and Australia, and New Zealand became the first champions, beating France 29-9 in the final, according to a search summary of Rugby World Cup histories. South Africa have won four times, in 1995, 2007, 2019 and 2023, making them the most successful nation. New Zealand have won three times, Australia twice and England once, so four countries have taken the trophy, according to the same summary.
South Africa beat New Zealand in the 2023 final and are the current champions, according to the summary. The sources reviewed do not give the score of that match or details of the next tournament, so neither is reported.
Rugby league has its own World Cup, and the 2026 edition began this week across Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, with 26 teams from 14 nations, as Delima News has reported. It runs until 15 November, and the women’s tournament is scheduled to open on 16 October.
The two codes now share a name and a history but have been separate for 131 years, a count by Delima News from 1895 to 2026.
Image: Rugby School and the statue of William Webb Ellis (file photo). Photo: Rundvald / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
