Rugby

RUGBY WORLD CUP

2011

Various early ball games were played during the middle ages (5th to 16th century) and are sometimes referred to as folk football, mob football or Shrovetide football. Such games would usually be played between neighbouring towns and villages, involving an unlimited number of players on opposing teams, who would fight and struggle to move an inflated pig's bladder by any means possible to markers at each end of a town. Authorities would later attempt to outlaw such dangerous and unproductive pastimes.

The aim of this web site is to record the history of Rugby Union Football and make it available online for educational purposes, The web site has been featured by the BBC, Rugby World, The Guardian, US Public Radio's Rugby Hour and a variety of other newspapers and publications. The web site is growing all the time so check back regularly and see what's been added. By all means, send in your thoughts, questions and suggestions for how we can continue to improve the web site.

On bronze plaque beneath staue:

'THE LOCAL BOY WHO INSPIRED THE GAME OF RUGBY FOOTBALL ON THE CLOSE AT RUGBY SCHOOL IN 1823.

SCULPTOR: GRAHAM IBBSEON 1997'

Many believe that rugby was born in 1823 when William Webb Ellis "with fine disregard for the rules of football (note that football was yet to split into the various codes) as played in his time at Rugby school, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it, thus originating the distinctive feature of the Rugby game".

Although this is in fact apocryphal, since there is little in the way of evidence to substantiate this view, it is however the popular view. So much so in fact that the international committee named the Rugby world cup the "William Webb Ellis Trophy".

Pretoria - New Zealand's High Commission in South Africa said on Monday it was "sorry" to hear a South African rugby journalist was detained in the town of Taupo.

"The New Zealand High Commission is very sorry to learn about the inconvenience suffered by rugby journalist Mr Vata Ngobeni in Taupo," it said in a short statement.

Ngobeni could lodge formal complaint with New Zealand's Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) at www.ipca.govt.nz."We have referred the matter to the New Zealand authorities for further investigation and/or comment," the commission said.

The southern Africans went down 81-7 in their final game against Wales on Monday, having previously lost to Fiji (49-25), Samoa (49-12) and South Africa (87-0), the latter on Thursday.

New Plymouth - Namibia exited the Rugby World Cup on Monday after losing all four of their Pool D matches, albeit within a punishing schedule of 16 days, something coach Johan Diergaardt branded as "unsuitable".

"It just showed what they are up to and what the players can do. Unfortunately you can't just do it for 20 minutes in a game, you have to do it for the full 80," he rued.

Napier - Japan's hopes of breaking their 20-year Rugby World Cup winless streak were ruined as a last-minute penalty by Canada's flyhalf Ander Monro left the two sides drawn at 23-23.It was the second successive World Cup that the two teams have registered a draw, Japan needing a last-gasp conversion to tie the scores at 12 points apiece at the 2007 tournament.

Japan then took command of the match, seeking to run everything and when Canada attacked to employ a ferocious offensive defence.A flustered, leaden-footed Canada were particularly lax at the breakdown and suffered a number of turnovers because of the hard-hitting tackles, Nicholas and lock Luke Thompson to the fore for Japan.

Georgia have made three changes to the team which went down 41-10 to England with David Zirakashvili, Giorgi Chkhaidze and Lasha Khmaladze promoted to the starting line-up.