Key takeaways
- Treat the Webb Ellis story as a legend: it was first published in 1876, four years after his death, by a former pupil who had left Rugby School before 1823.
- Date the code from documents rather than stories: written school rules in 1845, the Rugby Football Union in 1871 and the first international match the same year.
- The word 'union' only became necessary after 1895, when northern clubs left the Rugby Football Union over the payment of players and formed what became rugby league.
- Remember that scoring values changed repeatedly — a try was worth four points until 1992 — before comparing teams or players from different eras.
Rugby union grew out of the football played at Rugby School, became a codified sport when the Rugby Football Union was founded in 1871, acquired the word "union" after an 1895 split over paying players created what became rugby league, and stayed officially amateur until its governing body opened the game to professionalism in August 1995. Along the way it went international — a championship between the home nations from 1883, a governing board from 1886, a men's World Cup from 1987 — and reached 134 member unions by September 2025.
What it did not do is begin with one boy running with a ball in 1823. That story is the best-known thing about rugby's history and the least reliable, so it is worth taking apart first.
The Webb Ellis story: what is documented and what is not
Rugby School's own history page tells the story straight: in 1823 a pupil named William Webb Ellis, "with a fine disregard for the rules of football", took the ball in his arms and ran with it, originating the game. A plaque at the school, erected in 1900, says the same, and the trophy presented to Rugby World Cup winners is the Webb Ellis Cup.
The trouble is where the story comes from. Webb Ellis died in 1872. The account first appeared in 1876, when another former pupil, the antiquarian Matthew Bloxam, wrote to the school magazine that handling and running had "originated with a town boy or foundationer of the name of Ellis". Bloxam had attended Rugby School from 1813 to 1821, so he had left before the event he described, and in a longer letter of December 1880 he conceded he did not know "with what result as to the game" the run ended. He named no witness.
| Claim | Status | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Webb Ellis was a pupil at Rugby School | Documented | He attended from 1816 to 1825 |
| He caught the ball and ran forward with it in 1823 | A single late account | Bloxam's letters of 1876 and 1880, written over 50 years later by someone no longer at the school |
| That act created the rugby game | Not supported | Running with the ball developed gradually through the 1830s, and the school's rules were first written down in 1845 |
| An inquiry confirmed the story | Partly true | An Old Rugbeian Society sub-committee, set up in 1895, endorsed Bloxam's account in its 1897 report |
| The World Cup trophy is named after him | Documented | The Webb Ellis Cup |
The inquiry is the interesting part. Evidence it gathered undercuts the neat version: Thomas Hughes, who arrived at the school in 1834, told it that running in with the ball was then "not absolutely forbidden" but frowned on, and that the practice grew popular later in the decade. In a 2005 study, Dunning and Sheard argued that it was no coincidence the society began its investigation in 1895, as the game was splitting, and that endorsing a single-inventor origin was a way of asserting the school's authority over a sport it was losing control of. That is an interpretation rather than a documented fact, but it explains why a thin story received an official seal.
The fair summary: Webb Ellis was real, the run may have happened, and no evidence shows that it founded the game.
From school game to codified sport, 1845–1877
The documents start in 1845, when pupils at Rugby School wrote down and adopted the first set of rules for the game as played there. Before that, the rules had been settled by the boys themselves and changed with each intake.
Other football games were being codified at the same time, and the decisive break came in 1863. When the newly formed Football Association moved to drop running with the ball and "hacking" (kicking an opponent's shins) from its draft laws, the Blackheath club withdrew rather than accept them.
Then came three events in one year:
- 26 January 1871: representatives of 21 clubs met at the Pall Mall restaurant in London and founded the Rugby Football Union. Three lawyers who had been pupils at Rugby School drew up its first laws, approved that June.
- 27 March 1871: Scotland played England at Raeburn Place, Edinburgh, in the first international rugby match — a 20-a-side game arranged after a challenge from five Scottish club captains.
- 1877: teams were reduced from 20 to 15 a side, the number still used today.
Governance, and the split that named the game
Internationals created a problem the RFU could not solve on its own: who decides when the laws are disputed? According to World Rugby's own history, a disputed try led Ireland, Scotland and Wales to form the International Rugby Football Board in 1886, proposing that a neutral board should govern the laws. England's union, which had written the laws until then, joined in 1890 and held half of the 12 votes.
The bigger rupture was domestic. On 29 August 1895, at the George Hotel in Huddersfield, northern clubs resolved to leave the RFU over the payment of players and formed the Northern Rugby Football Union, which became the Rugby Football League in 1922. Only then did the original code need a distinguishing name: "rugby union" is a name the game acquired once there was a second rugby code to tell it apart from. Rugby union vs rugby league covers how the two games drifted apart afterwards.
An international game, 1883–1991
The competition structure most readers know was built over a century:
| Year | Development |
|---|---|
| 1883 | The Home International Championship between England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales is first played; the first sevens match is played at Melrose the same year |
| 1910 | France officially joins, creating the Five Nations |
| 1931–1939 | France is excluded and the tournament reverts to the Home Nations until play is halted by the Second World War |
| 1949 | New Zealand, South Africa and Australia join the international board |
| 1978 | France becomes the board's eighth member |
| 1987 | The first men's Rugby World Cup |
| 1991 | The first women's Rugby World Cup: twelve teams, in and around Cardiff, 6–14 April |
World Rugby describes the 1987 World Cup as the catalyst for the game spreading worldwide. The women's tournament four years later was organised by a small team of volunteers on a shoestring budget, and the World Rugby Museum's account notes that the players were self-funded.
Amateurism ends, 1995 onward
From the RFU's first amateur rules in 1886, rugby union was officially amateur for more than a century, and its authorities barred rugby league players, lifting that ban only temporarily during the Second World War. That changed in August 1995, when the international board oversaw the advent of professionalism. The board renamed itself the International Rugby Board in 1998, secured a return to the Olympic programme for rugby sevens in October 2009, and became World Rugby in November 2014. The international championship also grew: Italy joined in 2000, turning the Five Nations into the Six Nations.
The laws kept changing too
A modern fan watching an 1890s match would struggle less with the running than with the scoreboard. In the earliest game a try scored nothing at all — it earned the right to "try" a kick at goal, which is where the name comes from. Points values were introduced in the late 1880s and accepted by the home nations for the 1890–91 season, and then revised repeatedly:
| From | Try | Conversion | Penalty goal | Try worth how many penalty goals? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1891 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 0.67 |
| 1893 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 1.00 |
| 1971 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 1.33 |
| 1992 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 1.67 |
Before 1891 a try was worth one point and a conversion two, and the drop goal was worth four points from 1891 until 1948, three otherwise. Under World Rugby's current Law 8, as of the 2026 law book, a try is five, a conversion two, a penalty goal or dropped goal three, and a penalty try seven. The trend in the last column is the story of the modern game: the law-makers have steadily raised the reward for scoring tries relative to kicking. How rugby scoring works explains today's values and why the conversion angle depends on where the try is scored.
Reading the past from a draft board
24-0 Rugby Draft Pro League builds its draft pool from more than 1,000 forwards, backs, specialists and goal kickers drawn from different eras, and the pool rotates so no two boards look the same. History is a useful corrective when you are choosing between them. A player from the four-point-try era played a game with different incentives, and the gap between eras is not only in fitness but in what the laws rewarded. The game's ratings are its own unofficial estimates rather than historical statistics, and why a draft pool rotates explains how to plan for a board you cannot memorise.
Fifteen a side, the number settled in 1877, is still the frame for any squad, and rugby positions by number sets out the jobs within it. For more on the modern laws, start at the rugby hub; the studio's other titles are under sports GM. Our games are not affiliated with or endorsed by World Rugby, any union, school or competition mentioned here.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
Did William Webb Ellis invent rugby?
When was the Rugby Football Union founded?
Why is it called rugby union?
When did rugby union become professional?
When was the first Rugby World Cup?
Sources
- History | About World Rugby (opens in a new tab)World Rugby — accessed
- History of rugby union (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- William Webb Ellis (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- Our History (opens in a new tab)Rugby School — accessed
- 1871 Scotland versus England rugby union match (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- Rugby Football League (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- Guinness Men's Six Nations History and Origins (opens in a new tab)Six Nations Rugby — accessed
- Online exhibition — Pioneers: The First Women's Rugby World Cup (opens in a new tab)World Rugby Museum — accessed
- Law 8: Scoring (opens in a new tab)World Rugby — accessed
League, team and athlete names appear here only to identify the rules, records and history being discussed. Reign Creative LLC's sports games are not affiliated with, endorsed by or licensed by any league, team, players' association or athlete, and all names and marks belong to their owners.
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