RFU-150 today

 I am using an article from Daniel Schofield in the Daily Telegraph, as the basis of this day's blog. He begins with some names of some founding "clubs" of the Rugby Football Union. These exotically named clubs were Flamingoes, Gipsies and Mohicans; three out of 21 clubs that came together to form the Rugby Football Union, 150 years ago today. The first meeting was held in Regent Street's Pall Mall Restaurant. Harlequins and Blackheath still exist from that meeting, many do not.  Once the World Rugby Museum is reopened to celebrate the 150th Year, the minutes of this meeting will be on show. 

The main participants were not bearded gentlemen with top hats, but fresh faced school leavers with an average age of 23. Rugby was still confined to the schools. The meeting was called being connected to an unofficial football match played between England and Scotland in March 1870. The Scottish authorities did not officially recognise the match, preferring rugby football to association. A challenge was laid down by five Scottish clubs inviting England to play a rugby match at Raeburn Place in Edinburgh. A letter inevitably was published in "The Times" inviting rugby footballers of England to form a team and there was a codified set of rules produced. The main issue in the laws was centred around the practice of "hacking". This is when you were allowed to kick the shins of your opponent when somebody tries to run past you. This was a real and nasty feature of the game at Rugby School. Nails would be inserted into the boots to cause major damage. The rugby players at the Football Association in 1863 left when the FA decided that hacking should not be allowed as well as an important law, regarding "handling the ball" which was banned.

Eventually hacking was banned and you will note that the word "laws" instead of "rules" because the majority of those at the meeting were solicitors. So the "clubs" that formed tended to be made up from mates from school, hence the generation of "mates" clubs with names like "Gipsies", former boys from Tonbridge School in Kent. The club did not have a set ground to play on, hence the reference to a "wandering nature". By the way, this explains the famous soccer (association football) club known as The Wanderers, a team that won 5 out of the first seven FA Cup Finals. They played away. (The is also a cricket team known as The Izingari, that had no home ground, playing away fixtures only).

The Old Boys' rugby teams could not get established grounds and the attraction of more competitive "town" clubs left them short of players. Sportsmen from these fledgling clubs found themselves influencing sport through out the country, with Montague Shearman (above) of the Nomads becoming the secretary of the AAA, won a Blue in Athletics for Oxford and was a soccer player who represented The Wanderers and Clapham Rovers. He played rugby for the university and football alternative weeks. 

Reginald Birkett (of Lancing College) highlighted below, won one international cap at football v Scotland on April 5th 1879 and scored England's first ever rugby try in 1871. He also played in goal for Clapham Rovers in two Cup Finals, winning one v Oxford University in 1880. Another Clapham Rovers' member, William Percy Carpmael, went on to found the Barbarians Rugby club. They were of course "gentlemen sportsmen", many of whom who had time on their hands to play both codes and probably some cricket too!