Nevertheless, along with the name “rugby” in common, the two codes do have a common origin; and, for a time, were played according to almost identical rules.
The Legend of William Webb Ellis
Although games similar to rugby have been played for centuries (at least as far back as Roman times), modern Rugby football has its origins in the British Public Schools of the 1800s.
According to legend, in 1823, during a game of soccer at Rugby School, a 16-year-old named William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it towards his opponents’ goal-line. So impressed were his fellow players with this unique stratagem that they decided to adopt it as an integral feature of the game. And so rugby football was born.
Unfortunately, real historical evidence for the story is minimal. It is accepted that Ellis existed, but the type of football played at Rugby School in Ellis’s time was not soccer, but a game with a mixture of both soccer and rugby rules. There were no generally accepted rules, and pupils at English Public Schools often made up different variations of the rules for different matches.
So, rather than being brought into existence by the dashing and innovative action of one enterprising individual, rugby evolved over the years through a series of experiments involving the input of many people.
The Founding of the Rugby Football Union
By the 1840s running with the ball had become the norm, and by the 1870s rugby clubs had sprung up all over England and in the colonies. But different rules were used by different clubs and the first attempt to create a widely accepted set of rules was in 1871.
Edwin Ash, Secretary of the Richmond Rugby Club submitted a letter to the newspapers that read: "Those who play the rugby-type game should meet to form a code of practice as various clubs play to rules which differ from others, which makes the game difficult to play".
Ash’s initiative resulted in a meeting in January 1871 where the “Rugby Football Union” was founded, and a committee formed to formulate a set of rules. The committee comprised three ex-Rugby School pupils, all lawyers, and their task was completed and approved by June 1871.
Rugby and Professionalism
The original union was firmly committed to Public School principles of amateurism, but in 1893 reports surfaced of players in the North of England receiving payments for playing. The Union set up an inquiry, but was warned that if any clubs were punished, all the major clubs in Lancashire and Yorkshire would secede from the Union.
The Union went ahead nevertheless, and suspended an offending club. The Northern clubs attempted a compromise resolution that would allow payment for players when playing football instead of working (“broken time”), but the resolution was defeated.
The Rugby League
So, true to their word, in 1895, twenty-two northern clubs seceded from the Union and formed the Northern Union, later to become known as the Rugby League.
This split, known in rugby circles as “The Great Schism”, was more bitter and ran deeper than most outside of the rugby world realise. It was not simply a split along philosophical and regional lines but along class lines.
Rugby union, located in the South of England and dominated by ex-Public School pupils and the Public School philosophy, was seen as the game of the establishment, while rugby league, its headquarters in the North, was seen as the game of the working man.
The Different Rules
But leaving aside the class and cultural nature of the rift for now (whole books have been written about it) the rules of the rugby union game and the rugby league game soon began to diverge.
A common misconception is that rugby league was the professional version of the sport and rugby union the amateur, but while amateurism remained nominally a principle of rugby union until 1995, the differences in the rules that evolved led to two quite distinct games.
The Rugby League was arguably the innovator introducing many changes designed to speed up the game; but fans of rugby union will of course dispute that these are genuine improvements.
Prominent amongst the changes are that in rugby league the number of players per side is reduced to thirteen, and the manner in which the game is restarted after a stoppage is radically changed.
Full details of the differences would require several pages of description; but rugby union and rugby league are two quite separate codes, and shouldn’t be confused with each other anymore than, say, rugby league should be confused with American football.
