Rugby

The history of the origin of rugby is said have stemmed from an incident during a game of football at Rugby School, in Rugby, England, in 1823 when William Webb-Ellis reputedly picked up the ball and ran with it. Although this is likely to be apocryphal event, the trophy played for every four years at the Rugby World Cup is named after him.Significant events in the early development of rugby were the production of the first set of written laws in 1845, the Blackheath Club's decision to leave the The Football Association in 1863 and the formation of the Rugby Football Union in 1871. The code was originally known simply as "rugby football"; it was not until after a schism in 1895, which resulted in the separate code of rugby league, that the name "rugby union" came to be used for the game itself. Rugby union was famously an amateur sport until the IRB declared the game 'open' in 1995, removing restrictions on paying players.