Origin of Rugby

Title: Origin of Rugby

General Information about Item:

  • Folktale
    • Legend
  • English
  • UK

Informant Data:

  • Benjamin (Benji) Hannam is a 21 year old male student from London, UK. He grew up playing rugby from the age of 7 and so has been playing and watching the sport for 14 years. Benji grew up in London, UK where he was born to an English father, Ian Hannam, also from London and an American mother, Deborah Hannam, who is from Nashua, NH, USA. At the age of 18 Benji moves to the USA to attend Dartmouth College where he has played on the rugby team for all of his three years at the college thus far.

Contextual Data:

  • Rugby has always had its roots in being an amateur sport and like many other sports around the world there are questions about how the sport’s rules were actually invented and where the first recognized game of rugby was.

Item:

  • According to rugby legend the game of rugby was invented by a school boy called William Webb Ellis who lived in the town of Rugby, UK. The legend goes that during a game of football (Soccer), William got so tired of kicking the ball and picked up the ball and ran down the pitch. Investigations into this claim have produced no solid evidence but the legend has stuck due to it’s humorous nature to such an extend that even the trophy handed the the team that wins the World Cup tournament is called the William Webb Ellis trophy.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

  • Ian Sullivan (IS): This is Ian Sullivan, here with Benji Hannam. Benji, can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up, your childhood, and how you got started with the game of rugby?
  • Benjamin Hannam (BH): So, I am originally from London, England. I was born and lived there until I came to Dartmouth at the age of 19, 18. So I actually started playing rugby when I was 7, which is very typical for school kids in England. You tend to start playing touch rugby at a fairly young age, before progressing to the full contact form of the sport. So I’ve been playing for about 13, 14 years now.
  • IS: Okay, that sounds great. Can you tell us a little bit about, as someone who has been around the game for such a long time, about the myth of the origin of the game of rugby?
  • BH: So, rugby attributes its name to a school, a boarding school, a “high school” in the American terms, in the countryside in England. The myth goes that during a game of football, called “soccer” in America, one of the pupils, a guy called William Webb Ellis, got sick and tired of using his feet and kicking and just picked up the ball and ran down the length of the field before putting it down inside the goal, and that’s kind of how the game of rugby claims to have come about, sort of through this unofficial form. Other stories attribute it to being formed out of a game called the “Field Game,” which is at Eaton College, another boarding school in England. However, the Webb Ellis story tends to be the more prominent one, and has actually led to the trophy for the world cup tournament, that happens every four years, has been named the Webb Ellis Cup in its honor.
  • IS: Wow that’s interesting, thanks Benji.
  • BH: No problem.

Informant’s Comments:

  • N/A

Collector’s Comments:

  • I collected this piece of folklore myself as I had heard of this legend growing up in England, immersed in the sport. The legend is almost entirely taken to be a legend and not as historical fact although most people do agree that there are probably some elements of truth in the story such as the fact that there was a William Webb Ellis who lived in the town of Rugby, UK, but they also accept that there has been no hard evidence that the rest was true.

Collector’s Name:

Benjamin Hannam

Tags/Keywords:

  • Origin
  • Rugby
  • William Webb Ellis