The rugby is the contact and quite severe sport demanding good physical training. Now it is difficult to believe that rugby history once was closely connected with soccer history, however this is truethis is truethis is true. Only in the second half of the 19th century the rugby and soccer "were divided", and further each of these games began to develop in own way.
Medieval ball game
In the Middle Ages the ball game — the peculiar ancestor and soccer, and rugby was widespread in Britain. The ball was driven on city squares and small streets by huge crowds of people, without following any difficult rules. It was held in hand, thrown the friend the friend, kicked and so on.
Two contradictory teams participated in the game, in each of them there could be more than five hundred people. The purpose of players was in driving the ball to the certain place. Also it isn't surprising at all that sometimes this entertainment led to real fights and bloodshed.
From the school match to world popularity
However original origin of such sport as rugby, happened after all in the 19th century. On April 7, 1823 in the field of school of Rugby (England, the County of Warwickshire) the group of pupils decided to play the certain game similar to soccer. Sixteen-year-old William Webb Ellis was one of these pupils. At some point games he just picked up the ball (that was very gross violation of in advance stipulated rules) and ran to the goal of other team.
Someone considers that this story — only the legend. However at school where that game allegedly took place, in 1895 established quite real memorial plate with the text in which Ellis is called the founder of rugby.
The first full edition of rules of this game appeared in 1846. Though if to understand them, it becomes clear that it is about somebody the peculiar mix of soccer and rugby.
In 1863 there was one more event, essentially important for sport history. Then the English football association which resolutely forbade field players to pick up the ball was created. Thereby the Association accurately separated the sport from rugby.
Soon rugby players created the union too — it happened in the 1871st. It included more than twenty English clubs. At one of the first meetings this organization received the new, suiting all participants set of rules. Then the similar unions of rugby clubs arose in Ireland and Scotland. The sport quickly enough gained popularity both among workers, and among aristocrats.
The first international association of rugby players was created in 1890. In it teams of the former British colonial lands — New Zealand, Australia, South Africa were received, among other things. Generally, by the end of the 19th century played rugby already on all planet.
It is also worth noting that in 1892 at last the sizes were approved and the oval form of the ball is taken as the standard. Why oval, it is simple to understand: it is simpler to hold such ball with hands and to throw. And in general traditionally first balls for rugby were made of bladders of pigs, and their shape wasn't ideally round.
The rugby is in the Olympic plays
In 1900 the rugby was included in the program of the Olympic Games. And the French became winners of the first Olympic tournament. And here the English team, strangely enough, took only bronze.
Rugby competitions were the part of the Summer Olympic Games till 1924. And then for a number of reasons this sport dropped out of the holder of the Olympic disciplines for long decades.
Only in the 2016th at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro men's and women's rugby-7 tournaments were again organized (key difference of this version of rugby from classical among players — them here in each team on 7, but not 15). The national team of Fiji became the winner of the men's championship. And among women Australians were the strongest.