All Golds v Oxford KPL1S 2017 Final

THERE’S NO SUCH GAME AS RUGBY
(IT’S A PLACE IN WARWICKSHIRE)
WRITTEN BY GEORGE COWBURN
6
What the All Golds have been playing for the
last five seasons is Rugby (Football) League.
Add two flank forwards and it becomes Rugby
(Football) Union.
So how come there are two similar sports with
the same pitches, goalposts and oval shaped
balls run by two separate and completely
different organisations?
Put at its most simplistic it all boils down to
six shillings - thirty pence to anyone born after
15th February 1971. But there’s more to it than
that.
“Football” as an unregulated free-for-all, often
played by a whole village on public holidays,
existed in this country from medieval times
but it was the public schools, particularly
Rugby, and the Universities that created a
relatively disciplined game from these early
knockabouts.
Incidentally, the legend that William Webb
Ellis in some way invented the game of rugby
is a complete myth which surfaced long after
Webb Ellis’s death.
The Old Rugbeians Society (ex pupils of
the school) examined the claim, including
interviewing surviving old boys from the
period, and could find no concrete evidence to
back the claim up from any source.
It didn’t stop them deciding it was probably
true, however, in a classic example of wishful
thinking.
The early rules of “football” at Rugby school
included being able to catch the ball on the full
and kick it back out of your hands as gradually,
the game emerged into something akin to the
game of Rugby Union now played.
During Victorian times, the game began to
spread from the schools and universities
propelled in part by a piece of Parliamentary
legislation. The 1850 Factory Act decreed
that work had to cease by no later than 2pm
on Saturday afternoon; so what better way
for the miner, docker, foundryman or factory
labourer to spend his Saturday afternoon than
in a game of rugby?
By 1871 the RFU was formed to run the game
based then, as now, at Twickenham - a source
of annoyance to clubs in the north who found
travel to London to attend meetings and
influence matters very difficult.
County Cup competitions began in the 1870s
and, in the north in particular, became very
popular, drawing large crowds for the matches.
Naturally, ambitious clubs wanted the best
players and were prepared to pay for their
services enticing them from other clubs with
cushy job offers and/or cash payments - a
useful source of income in those hard times.
This change from the original social and
amateur ethos alarmed the RFU and its allies
and at the 1886 AGM of the RFU all payments
to players were outlawed - the game was to be
purely amateur.
Generally speaking, the northern clubs (and
some in other areas - the Gloucester club
itself was found in breach of regulations in the
1890s) ignored this rule and rumours regarding
payments were
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