A Brief History of Rugby : Volume 1

Volume 1 covers the 1823 - 1969This is the essential pick-up, put-down, and pick-up again rugby history for everybody. From players to fans, from newspapers to television and from computer games to bumper-stickers and everything in between

Early football were mainly mob style games, with enormous numbers of players attempting to advance the ball into a goal area, often by any means necessary. Rules were simple with violence and injury common. The games remained largely disorganized until the early 19th century when games began to be played on college grounds. The invention of rugby was therefore not the act of playing early forms of the game, or the acts of a certain William Webb Ellis, but rather the events which led up to its codification and the development of a common set of laws.