Africa

The origins of the game Rugby:
Ball games have been played around the world for centuries but the ‘football’ codes with which we re familiar today were first formalised in England and spread across the globe by the colonisers and entrepreneurs of the British Empire during the 19th century.
The drive to write down a set of rules for the various kicking and handling games that were played across the country came from the private schools.
The pupils of Winchester, Harrow and Rugby all had their own distinct set of local rules and confusion reigned when the schools came to play each other.
They were loosely divided between those favouring the handling style and those preferring the kicking game. Leading the way among the handling enthusiasts was Rugby School in central England.
Legend has it that it that in 1823 a pupil named William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it "showing a fine disregard for the rules of football" a later historian wrote.
This is widely regarded as the moment that rugby union was born although the accuracy of the story is disputed. What is certain is the old boys of Rugby were enthusiastic in their spreading of Rugby’s version of the handling code rules - although they bare only passing resemblance to the Laws of today’s game.
To the end confusion over what style of game schools would play when they met, a meeting was called in 1863 to thrash out a unified code.
But there the two factions could not see eye-to-eye and rugby union and association football (soccer) were born.
Although the first style of rugby played in South Africa at Bishops School in Cape Town conformed to the rules of Winchester School (the headmaster was a former pupil of the English School) by the time the first governing body of the sport - England’s Rugby Football Union (RFU) - was founded in 1871, Rugby’s rules held sway.
That same year the first international match was played between England and Scotland. Wales and Ireland followed onto the international calendar shortly afterwards and by the end of the century South Africa, New Zealand and two Australian states were also part of the international community.
Since that time the game has evolved slowly.
The game’s international governing body, the International Rugby Football Union (today the International Rugby Board) was founded in 1886 although England declined to take part in a dispute over the number of representatives they would be permitted to supply.
It was agreed that games would be played according to the rules of the Rugby Football Union but it was not until 1930 that the way the game was played was standardised across the world.
The first match in South Africa took place between the "Officers of the Army" and the "Gentlemen of the Civil Service" at Green Point in Cape Town in 1862 and ended as a 0-0 draw.
The game spread with British colonisers through the Eastern Cape, Natal and along the gold and diamond routes to Kimberley and Johannesburg.
The first union to be formed in South Africa was Western Province, which came into being in 1883; Griqualand West followed in 1886 and Eastern Province in 1888.
South Africa played its first international in 1891 against a touring side from Britain although it was not until the side toured Britain in 1906 that they became known as the Springboks.
The sport quickly gripped the imagination of many South Africans and the country’s success fuelled the enthusiasm.
South Africa won their third series in 1903 and it was not until the 1955 tour of New Zealand that they were to be defeated in a series as they established themselves as arguably the world’s leading rugby nation.
Their most dangerous rival was invariably New Zealand whom they met for the first time in 1921 to establish what is regarded as rugby’s most bitter rivalry.
The game remained strictly amateur until 1995 when the inevitable decision to allow players to be paid was made. Up until then anyone caught taking money for playing the game was banned for life.
In the six years since that decision the game has changed more rapidly than in the previous century and a half. New competitions such as the Vodacom Super 12, Vodacom Tri-Nations and the Heineken Championship in Europe have hugely increased the game’s revenues and spectator interest...

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