A Stopover at Rugby

Rugby - a new religion?

What could be more exciting than a hooker in a scrum whispering insults to the opponents they've locked heads with, a conversion or a running intercept ending in a successful try seconds before full time, clinching the score for the team you support. Rugby is a game where players don't complain about the rip on their face from an opponent's boots, let alone roll around crying on the pitch after a faked tackle. This blog isn't about bagging out inferior forms of football, but it does have a bias towards the mighty Blacks.

The birth place of NZ's national game and M's favourite sport was an important stop over on an overnight round trip to visit a couple of British icons. The little Rugby museum was closed but a wander around the school grounds that supported the new rule of being able to run with the ball after a 'fair catch' and through the uprights to score, was still a thrill.

Victory Haka behind the Web Ellis Cup 

The football played at Rugby School in the 1820's, was more like soccer than rugby but without any offside rules.  It was described by one observer as an enormous rolling maul. A string line between two uprights at each end of the common were the goals.  Players were allowed to catch and intercept the ball with their hands but had to place it down at their feet to travel with it or punch pass it (more like Aussie Rules?).

Legend has it that in 1823, William Webb-Ellis got sick of the blockages in a football match one day and decided to run with the ball through the uprights to score. A fellow pupil reported this and the telling off he got for doing it! By 1839 another student, Jem Mackie, used his 'strong running skills' to make running with the ball an accepted part of the game. It still wasn't a legal part of the Rugby football rules though for another 2 or 3 years.

Rugby School on a cold Sunday

Web-Ellis carrying the pig bladder for the first time

The Head Master of Rugby School in 1828 was Thomas Arnold. He seems to have been an educator of great vision and influence. He introduced the form system, which was adopted by the rest of the country, and a much broader range of subjects. The curriculum hadn't changed up to this point since Shakespeare's Grammar school days. Science didn't exist and Mathematics was considered common as only tradespeople required it. Even Issac Newton didn't do any math until arriving at Trinity College in Cambridge in the 1640's. Mr Arnold introduced Mathematics as a subject in Rugby School before many other schools around England.

He is also known to have purported and supported a peer discipline system where the prefects took care of most misdemeanors with punishments of their own devising. The huge ball games out on the school common were often used to deliver more physical warnings and paybacks. Mr Arnold supported the new running game - perhaps thinking that making the boys run further, faster would be an easier way to reduce after lights out mischief than corridor monitors.

This is Thomas Hughes , author of Tom Brown's School Days.
These stories were based on his time as a student at Rugby.
The main sport in this coming of age book, which was the first
in the British school genre, was cricket?!

The Headmaster invited other schools to football matches which meant they all needed to adapt their individual football rules to one game. Eton, Marlborough and Harrow all followed Mr Arnold's strong lead and soon most of the top boys schools were playing Rugby rules. Eventually three senior pupils, including William Arnold, the former Head Master's 17yr old son, were asked to codify the rules into a list of 37 in 1845.

Most of the schools still played by their own variations so inter-school games were problematic. There developed a deep divide between the schools who kept play forward to dribbling (I can't find the origins of this strange term to describe a controlled bunting with the feet) and those who encouraged running forward with the ball in hand. A meeting was held at Cambridge University where all the involved schools sent their Sports Master with a copy of their school rules. The aim was to develop a single game. Knowing how passionate people can be about their chosen code it is little wonder that few agreements were made. Two things were agreed, that hacking and tripping were illegal plays. However Rugby school continued to allow them in their school only games. It was apparently a rather violent game where serious injury was considered character building.

A local Barber shop proudly bears this plaque.

When the boys left school to go to College and employment, they wanted to continue to play their favourite ball game.  What once was a new discipline method became a fitness exercise then eventually became a game of pride where teams were held in equal status to a soldier's regiment. Three of Rugby School old boys became lawyers and updated the 37 rules into laws.

One of the lawyers was recovering from a broken leg sustained in an early season game so used his spare time to write up the laws for presentation to the newly formed Rugby Football Union(1871). All the English, Welsh and Scottish teams that played running with the ball in hand games sent representatives. The lawyer's draft standarised the rules and removed the more violent aspects of the Rugby School game - ie sitting on opponents, throwing defenders without the ball to the ground to clear a path for the runner (sounds more like American football), tripping and hacking.

The Originals. They were the first colonial team to tour the UK. These NZ players won every single game except the one against Wales that is touted as the first unofficial World Cup.  Wales 3:NZ 0.  There was a disputed NZ try - ie the NZ player saying it was and his Welsh tackler saying it wasn't - the Ref went with the Welshman.  A winning streak that falters at the big game is a pattern that has replayed over the years. All Black losses actually effect the NZ GDP - ah the pain of passion.
Note the sexy leather yoke and silver fern on their all black uniform, style or protection?

The first international game, between England and Scotland in 1871, added two rules common in London matches that are still in the game today. The first is that after a try the conversion is taken from the point of touch out into the ground in a straight line towards the 22 as the kick point, the second is that a throw in is taken from the place the ball crossed the sideline, not where it landed.

Rugby was exported to the world through public school boys who joined the army or went to the new worlds for adventure or enterprise. Harvard, Princeton and Yale Universities in the USA all formed teams, though Yale was later to ban Rugby for being too violent. In 1863 the first NZ team, the Christchurch Football Club started but the first Rugby match in NZ was played by Nelson College and Nelson City Football Club. In 1864 Sydney University established the first Australian Rugby club. British soldiers taught it to the Canadians and played against each other.   South African rugby started in 1876 in Cape Town and France got involved with the beginning of the Paris Football Club in 1878.  In 1886 Russia banned Rugby for being brutal and inciting riots.

This is from the Haka written especially for the All Blacks with reference to the Silver Fern and our rumbling land.  It's called the Kapa o Pango. The controversial 'throat slit' move is a traditional 'drawing of the spirit' in a Zen sort of preparation for giving your all.  
I'm afraid that if I was standing opposite, I would miss the spiritual nuance!

Down under in 1883 the NZ National team toured Australia but the countries didn't play an international match until 1903(NZ won). Before this, in 1888 the 'New Zealand Natives' team toured Britain and performed Te Rauparaha's Ka Mate haka, for the first time, on international soil. Most of the players were Maori and they won 78/107 games. I'm not sure how the 'Mother Country' would have felt about being beaten, by the 'natives' it set out to civilise, at its own game?

George Nepia - First All Black hero.
In response to English and Welsh singing at
the beginning of matches on the 1924
tour, he led the Blacks in a Haka
performance. They repeated this every
match thereafter and a legend was born.

The NZ team toured the 'Home Countries' (UK) in 1905, and the name All Blacks was created by the English Press.  The name was adopted by the NZ press and eventually became the official title of New Zealand pride and joy. They toured the UK again in 1924 and won every game, perhaps the Haka - Kia Whaka-ngawari put the UK teams off their stride. 

I'm not sure what the old boys of the 1800's would think of the modern professional game with its World Cup and other international competitions. Even though its first foe, the dribbling football is called the World game because it has a larger population and following; even though Rugby League and Aussie Rules are both bigger in Australia and Grid Iron with all its padding and safety equipment overshadows its source in the US; M and most of his friends agree with the International Rugby Board:
'Rugby is the game played in Heaven.'

Charlie was very interested in the squirrels who were diving around in a frenzy trying to collect as many fallen acorns and chestnuts as they could before the cold sets in.  The excited yelps coming from his tiny larynx are more like the scared opposition rather than a war cry - a little bit embarrassing really. I won't mention his nationality!

NZ and UK royalty
Dunedin watching a young players match 2014

2011 World Cup Champions