Sean Fagan

Rugby history can be traced back to the times of folk football. However, the form of football that gave rise to the rugby codes of today, begins its story early in the 1800s at Rugby School in England.

Founded in 1567, Rugby School provided private education for the sons of England's upper classes. Such institutions were called 'public schools'.

Each of the public schools developed their own rules of football - the differences in the rules didn't matter until the middle 1800s when the schools began to play each other. The laws rarely extended beyond a dozen or so written clauses, but many unwritten rules also existed. The opposing captains would agree on the rules to be used in each inter-school game. Sometimes the visitors simply accepted playing by the home school's rules. On field disputes were settled between the captains.

Six of the seven major public schools (including Eton, Harrow and Winchester) played the version of football that came to be known as soccer. Rugby School's football allowed for far more handling of the ball. How it came to develop so differently is lost in history and the true story is unlikely to ever be known.

The much revered tale of how in 1823 the young Rugby School student, William Webb Ellis, 'in a fine disregard for the rules' caught the ball in his arms and ran forward - in a defining moment in sports history - is now accepted by sports historians as being fanciful and a distortion of what is known.

There is no doubt that Ellis was a student at Rugby School from 1816 to 1825, but he was never mentioned at the time by anyone as a player who revolutionised the game by running with the ball. More importantly, the rules of rugby were not changed to authorise running with the ball until 1846.

So even if Webb Ellis did run with the ball, the rugby game did not dramatically change because of his actions and he cannot be credited as 'the originator' of modern rugby. At best he can be described as one of the first to run forward with the ball - but the effect of his action was minimal.

Handling the ball was permitted in football in the early 1800's when players were allowed to take a mark and then a free kick, long before Ellis arrived at Rugby. Most of the public schools allowed forms of handling the ball right up until the formation of the Football Association (soccer) in the 1860's. The Association even considered whether to allow its continuation, before eventually deciding to outlaw it. The reverse picture that the rugby game was born from soccer the moment Ellis caught and ran with the ball is now known to be unfounded.

While no one in the colonies had ever heard of William Webb Ellis, they had read of Tom Brown's Schooldays - a book about life at Rugby School. Through the book's popularity and the migration of former Rugby students to New South Wales, New Zealand and Queensland, the rugby game came to be taken up as the preferred footballing code. The game also spread across Great Britain and to South Africa, Canada and the United States of America.