Young William Webb Ellis had no idea the consequences of his actions when he reached down, picked up the soccer ball and ran.
That one little slip, that one boyish prank, led to what is today scrums, rucks, mauls and hookers . . . and halfbacks, fullbacks, options and the Super Bowl.In 1823, young Ellis, bored with kicking the soccer ball, picked it up with his hands. When opposing players rushed to rescue the ball, someone envisioned a new game - rugby. It was named after his school, Rugby School of England. The game, in a rough and knockdown, no-rules way, became popular in Europe. Eventually, it immigrated to America, but decades passed before there was any interest in the game.
One thing that did develop, however, was that in 1906 a slightly different version of the game, after the adoption of the forward pass, was started called football.
Today, here in America, rugby is the never-talked-about cousin of both soccer and football. That's because rugby carries with it some heavy baggage. It has been judged rough, unruly and only for those who are big, brawny and looking for battle scars.
All of which, says Gary Brown, a fit but certainly not large player on the Wasatch Athletic Club team, is wrong.
"You're running, constantly. Very large players tire quickly. Also, it takes a lot out of you. You're constantly moving. You don't want to waste energy trying to put the big hits on other players. Besides, you're playing the ball and not the player," he points out.
Rugby hasn't always been the game it is today. It was, at one time, very physical and warlike.
Early games were nothing less than free-for-alls. Injuries became a recognition for good play. It was the publication of photos of a particularly harsh game in 1905, between Swarthmore and Pennsyl- vania, that brought about a presidential decree from Theodore Roosevelt to reform or stop playing.
New rules were adopted. Still, Americans didn't take to rugby until the 1960s, when the game started to gain a following among college students. Other countries, like Britain, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, embraced the game of rugby. A recent survey, for example, counted the number of rugby players under the age of 19. In the U.S. there were 2,250 and in New Zealand there were 110,000.
Students took to the sport because it is fast, continuous, involves a lot of players and, despite what it may seem like from the sidelines, requires as much from the mind as the body.
True, rugby is not as specialized as football. With continuous action, it's difficult to call plays. As a result, players need to be quick on their feet and with their minds.
In Utah there are eight club teams between Logan and Provo, and about a dozen high school teams participate in the sport.
The game itself is a little bit of soccer, a portion of football - and the other 90 percent is run-and-tackle rugby.
A rugby field is 75 yards wide and 110 yards long and, like football, has goal posts that are 18 feet 6 inches apart, with the crossbar 10 feet above the ground. Each team puts 15 players on the field.
The ball is oval and about the same size as a football but less pointed. The official uniform includes a jersey, shorts, socks and cleated shoes. Players are not allowed to wear protective gear.
The objective is to score more points than the other team. Scoring points, however, is nothing like its sister sports. A try, where the oval-shaped ball is touched on the ground behind the opposing team's goal line, is worth five points. A drop kick, where the ball hits the ground once before it is kicked through the goal posts, is worth three. A penalty kick is also worth three and a conversion after a try is worth two.
Two parts of the game are definitely rugby:
First, players can use their hands, heads and feet to move the ball. And, while the ball may be passed from player to player, the pass cannot be forward. Players can only advance the ball forward by running or kicking. Running the ball, of course, opens the way for opposing players to grab, tackle and hold the player with the ball.
Second, to get the ball into play, teams go into a formation called a "scrummage" or "scrum." It serves the same purpose as a jump ball in basketball. Eight men from each side lock arms and drive forward in an all-out pushing match. The ball is thrown into the center and it becomes the responsibility of the players in the center, like the "hooker," to snare the ball with their feet and push it backwards to a teammate, which is something similar to the duties of a center on a football team.
Once a team has possession, the objective is to move the ball up-field for a "try" or a drop-kick goal. That done, the two teams "scrum" again.
If the ball goes out of bounds, the teams do something like a "scrum," called a "line-out." In this case, the eight players line up like two columns of soldiers facing each other and the ball is tossed down the middle.
Two other terms commonly thrown around in a rugby match are "mauls" and "rucks." These are similar in that they refer to when the player with the ball is stopped by whatever means possible. A "maul" is a loose formation around a player stopped but standing, while a "ruck" is a formation around a player held on the ground by one or more of the opposing players.
There are unwritten rules as well. The game has no room for players intent on causing injury. In some cases, whole teams have been banned. Brown says both he and his brother have been playing for a long time, "and neither one of us has suffered a serious injury. There are more injuries in football than in rugby. With all the protection, football players think they can hit harder. I can't even recall seeing two players get into a serious fight. There might be some pushing and shoving, but that's about it. People have the wrong idea about rugby."
What rugby is is a game of hands, feet and mind, where players run and dodge and tackle on the field, and work hard off the field to shake years of misunderstanding.