HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2024-09-02T14:48:19.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: When was the first international rugby match, and who played in it?
items: When Vichy France banned rugby
items: The history of rugby: when was the sport invented?
items: Rugby warriors: the rugby-playing heroes of the First and Second World War
items: 10 things you didn’t know about London’s sporting history
items: History explorer: Britain’s coal industry
items: When I met Mandela: 1995 Rugby World Cup final
items: A history of British sport

When was the first international rugby match, and who played in it?
type: item
date: 2024-02-23T10:32:00.000Z
creator: Dominic Sandbrook
subject: Victorian
subject: Period
subject: Rugby
subject: Trends-News
description: Scotland and England have long been rivals on the rugby pitch and now compete annually for the Calcutta Cup. But did you know that the two teams first faced one another in the world's first rugby international match? Dominic Sandbrook considers the occasion on 27 March 1871
encoded: To most of the people of Edinburgh, 27 March 1871 was nothing special. As they streamed to work across the city’s bridges, trudging to their workshops and factories in the fine spring air, it seemed just another Monday, heralding the start of another week of toil. Yet for local residents interested in the new sports that were taking root in Britain’s industrial cities, it would be a day to remember. In that morning’s edition of The Scotsman, an advertisement proclaimed that Raeburn Place, the home ground of the Academical Cricket Club, would be hosting an unprecedented sporting encounter, with entrance costing a shilling a head. At three o’clock, 40 young men from England and Scotland were due to contest the world’s first international rugby match. When did the first international rugby fixtures begin? There had long been talk of arranging international fixtures. The previous year, an English side had played a team of Scottish exiles at the Oval in London, although they had been playing under the Association (‘soccer’) rules, which were not very popular in Scotland. The football world was still dominated by bickering between the champions of different codes, and in January 1871 representatives from 21 English clubs had met in a Regent Street restaurant to try to standardise rugby regulations and eliminate the more violent excesses. Read more | Rugby warriors: the rugby-playing heroes of the First and Second World War Their neighbours, however, were determined not to be left behind, and a group of Scottish clubs promptly sent an invitation to London. “With a view of really testing what Scotland can do against an English team,” they wrote, “we, as representing the football interests of Scotland, hereby challenge any team selected from the whole of England, to play us a match, 20-a-side, Rugby rules, either in Edinburgh or Glasgow.” As though determined to confirm suspicions of English insularity, the newly formed Rugby Football Union did nothing about it. But one of L…

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When Vichy France banned rugby
type: item
date: 2023-09-07T12:34:34.000Z
creator: Professor Tony Collins
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Rugby
description: Revisit the hidden history of one of French rugby's most shameful episodes, in an archive article from Professor Tony Collins
encoded: Marshal Philippe Pétain, head of state of the collaborationist French government in Vichy, issued a decree on the morning of 19 December 1941 that was unique in the history of world sport. With a stroke of his pen, he announced that the sport of rugby league, or le rugby à treize as it is known in France, was banned. Its playing was to cease, its offices closed and its assets confiscated by the government. Overnight, a sport with thousands of players and hundreds of clubs was wiped out. Why did Vichy France ban rugby league? The cause of this extraordinary decree lay in the sporting and social upheavals that gripped France in the 1930s, but its origins can be traced back to the origins of French rugby in the late 19th century. Rugby had deep roots in France. Taken up by Anglophile middle-class young men in the 1880s, it rapidly became popular among the French elite. The first French club, Racing Club de France, was formed in Paris in 1882. Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, was a strong supporter of the game and its amateur ethos. He refereed the first French rugby championship final in 1892. By the early 1900s, the game had begun to spread around the small towns and villages of southern France, attracting working-class players and spectators. After the First World War, rugby’s popularity meant that it became the focus for intense local rivalries. The French championship became dominated by small town clubs, such as Quillan in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Bankrolled by local “notables”, these clubs ignored the game’s amateur rules in the rush to sign the best players. As the competition between clubs grew fiercer, so did the way the game was played. In southern France, the sport became known as “rugby de muerte”, because of the violence that was commonplace in championship matches. Read more | Rugby warriors: the rugby-playing heroes of the First and Second World War The French Rugby Federation (FFR) appeared powerless to stop either payments …

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The history of rugby: when was the sport invented?
type: item
date: 2021-01-26T07:05:00.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Rugby
subject: Sports enthusiast
description: Did William Webb Ellis really invent the game of rugby at Rugby School? And when did the game split into rugby union and rugby league? As the 2019 Rugby World Cup kicks off, we revisit an article by Julian Humphrys that explores the origins and early history of the sport...
encoded: Did William Webb Ellis really invent the game at Rugby School? The evidence for this story – that a schoolboy invented rugby by picking up and running with the ball during a football match – is sketchy to say the least. At the start of the 19th century a number of public schools (including Rugby) were playing a version of football, all with slightly different rules, though it was normally permissible to catch the ball to kick it. In the 1820s, boys at Rugby began running with ball in hand, and this gradually became an integral part of their game. In 1863 the Football Association was formed to standardise the laws of the game. Running with the ball was outlawed but Rugby carried on with its own version of ‘rugby football’. Scotland v England: The world's first international rugby match How did the game spread? Mainly through the influence of former Rugby pupils who introduced it where they lived and worked. Soon ‘rugby clubs’ were being established throughout Britain and the colonies but, as with early football, there were considerable variations in the rules. How was rugby standardised? In 1871 a meeting was held at London’s Pall Mall Restaurant. The Wasps representative turned up at the wrong restaurant but 21 other rugby clubs were represented; the Rugby Football Union (RFU) was founded and three former Rugby pupils, all lawyers, deputed to write the laws of the game. However, it wasn’t all plain sailing. Disputes over the laws continued at an international level for some time. Rugby warriors: the players who won the Victoria Cross Why did the game split into Rugby Union and Rugby League? Money. When, in 1895, the RFU voted against the payment of players for ‘broken time’ (ie for lost earnings) while playing, 22 northern clubs broke away to form the Northern Union. Later renamed the Northern Rugby Football League, it would allow its players to be paid and introduced changes to the laws of the game. The Union authorities determinedly defended the concept of amateur…

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Rugby warriors: the rugby-playing heroes of the First and Second World War
type: item
date: 2019-01-30T11:14:30.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Rugby
description: No other sport can boast such an illustrious record in the service of its country during times of war. Gavin Mortimer profiles players from the past who were heroes not just on the pitch but on the battlefields of war too…
encoded: On the night of 10 December 1941, ten British soldiers crept towards the aerodrome at Tamet, a coastal town midway between the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi. The aerodrome was held by the Axis powers of Germany and Italy. The Britons were deep inside enemy territory yet supremely confident in the challenge confronting them. They belonged to the newly formed L Detachment of the Special Air Service Brigade and were led by a huge Irish officer called Blair Mayne. Once on the aerodrome the men moved quickly from aircraft to aircraft, silently placing bombs on the wings of the machines. With that done, Mayne walked up to the pilots’ mess and, in a subsequent letter home, he described what happened next: “I kicked open the door and stood there with my Colt 45, the others at my side with a Tommy gun and another automatic. The Germans stared at us. We were a peculiar and frightening sight, bearded and unkempt hair. For what seemed an age we just stood there looking at each other in complete silence. I said: ‘Good evening’. At that a young German arose and moved slowly backwards. I shot him… the room was by now in pandemonium.” Read more: The history of rugby Scotland v England: The world's first international rugby match (exclusive to The Library) The SAS soldiers left behind them several dead Italian and German airmen, as well as 24 enemy aircraft destroyed or badly damaged. This hit-and-run raid was the first of a type that would be repeated dozens of times in the coming months, many of them led by the fearsome ‘Paddy’ Mayne. At the war’s end, Mayne was one of the most famous warriors in the British army, feted as much for his bravery (he won the DSO – Distinguished Service Order – on four occasions) but also for the fact that he was a rugby player of some repute. From 1937 to 1939, the 6ft 4in (1.93m) tall Mayne had played for Ireland, winning plaudits for his athleticism and aggression, and earning himself a place on the British Isles rugby union tour to South A…

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10 things you didn’t know about London’s sporting history
type: item
date: 2018-07-07T05:00:00.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: London’s history
subject: Rugby
subject: Where history happened
description: From Tudor tennis courts to Georgian swimming pools, London's love affair with sporting venues dates back hundreds of years. But some aspects of the capital's rich sporting history might surprise you. Here Simon Inglis, the author of Played in London, reveals 10 lesser-known facts
encoded: Had it not been for the intervention of Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert, the Oval cricket ground in Kennington might well have disappeared only six years after it opened Albert intervened to stop housing being built on the site in 1851 because he had recently become a fan of the game. The name Oval, incidentally, predates cricket being played there. It was coined to reflect the layout of roads around an oval-shaped market garden. The name Oval would nevertheless become synonymous with cricket, so that there are currently around 40 other ‘Ovals’ around the world, including in New Zealand, South Africa and the Caribbean. London has the oldest bicycle shop in the world (Pearsons of Sutton, established as a blacksmiths in 1860), and the second oldest cycle track in the world, Herne Hill, opened in 1891. (The oldest track is in Erfurt, Germany, built in 1885) Herne Hill was one of eight purpose-built velodromes constructed in the capital during the first cycling boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The focal point for London cyclists was Holborn, where 22 showrooms were listed in 1901. The Pickwick Bicycle Club, formed in London in 1870, is the oldest cycling club in the world. London and England’s oldest golf club is Royal Blackheath Founded by Scottish exiles in the capital, the club celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2008, although the earliest confirmed records of the club’s existence date back only to 1766. As Blackheath was then, as now, a public expanse, golfers were obliged to wear red jackets in order to warn passers-by that a game was in progress. This custom is still followed by golfers on Wimbledon Common. There are now 108 golf courses in London, covering an astonishing 3 per cent of the total land mass of the capital – the equivalent in area almost of the entire Borough of Greenwich. London’s oldest surviving sports-related structure can be visited only by cabinet ministers and government officials Dating from c1534, it is the northern wall of …

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History explorer: Britain’s coal industry
type: item
date: 2015-12-03T12:10:24.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Industrial revolution
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Rugby
description: Dr Ben Curtis and Charlotte Hodgman visit the Big Pit National Coal Museum in Blaenafon, where miners risked their lives working in an industry that defined south Wales for decades
encoded: Sitting on the north-eastern edge of the south Wales coalfield – an area of about 1,000 square miles, stretching from Pontypool in Torfaen, to St Brides Bay in Pembrokeshire – the huge, red winding tower of Big Pit is an impressive and unmissable sight for visitors as they pull into the museum car park. Once the heart of mining operations at the site, its powerful engine still winds people up and down the 90-metre mineshaft, although these days the only passengers are visitors who have chosen to embark on a 50-minute guided tour of the former mine. The shrieks and groans of the winder – introduced in 1952 as a replacement for the steam-powered original – echo constantly across the site. Those wishing to take the underground tour are provided with a hard hat, safety lamp, waist belt with battery, and a rebreather that can filter toxic air for an hour – just in case! As the elevator cage comes to a shuddering halt in the gloom below, tour groups are led through the cramped, dark and often damp tunnels, where hundreds of men once worked in gruelling conditions, cutting coal by hand and transporting it to the surface. The underground stables for the pit ponies who pulled heavy trams of coal, and rarely saw daylight, are also poignant. Emerging into the fresh air, visitors are free to roam the site, which has retained many of its original structures, among them blacksmiths’ buildings from the 1870s; a lamp room, where miners collected and returned their equipment; and a fan house, which provided essential oxygen into the mine, and removed or diluted unwanted gases, dust and fumes. Elsewhere, a walk up to the former canteen (now a cafe), and then on to the viewpoint above, provides a stunning panorama of the site and the remnants of its industrial past. Small beginnings Standing on the site of an earlier mine (Kearsley Pit), which was sunk in 1860, Big Pit is an amalgamation of several other mines, and came into being in 1880 when the existing 30-metre shaft was deepened …

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When I met Mandela: 1995 Rugby World Cup final
type: item
date: 2013-12-20T17:05:44.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Rugby
description: In June 1995, Ed Morrison was chosen to referee the third Rugby World Cup final. Yet, little did he know, as he stepped out onto Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg just before the game, that he was about to witness one of the most iconic moments in rugby history – Nelson Mandela’s appearance on the pitch to offer the South African team his support.
encoded: Ed shares his memories of that famous day with us Q: Can you run us through what happened that day? A: Well I had become interested in what was happening in the case of Mandela – I read books on his life, and became fascinated by him. But what I had never done was link rugby and Mandela. What became apparent quite quickly was how clever and wise he was in the way he brought white and black together in a rainbow nation. When Mandela came down the incline and onto the field wearing his cap and rugby shirt that day, I realised “this is something a bit different”. It was almost fantasy really. What struck me was how small [Mandela] was. But you could not help but feel completely overwhelmed by his stature. His presence was quite extraordinary. You look back on it and you just think “that was fate”. Q: How did you feel? Were you nervous about how the crowd would react? A: Any major sporting occasion is tense. You would not be human if you did not have some ‘fear factor’. But I remember thinking “I cannot worry too much about Mandela being here, or I will fail.” I had to be a little bit selfish. The crowd went bonkers. I was gobsmacked – he just smiled knowingly. I remember he had piercing brown eyes. He just looked at me and smiled. Q: When did you realise you had witnessed a huge moment in history? A: I’m not sure, but I feel incredibly privileged to have been there. I realised at the time I was in the presence of someone very different – he was unlike anyone I had ever met in my lifetime. He thanked everyone – it struck me how frail he was, even at that time. And you would expect a guest at a sporting event to be formally dressed, but there he was in his rugby shirt and cap, just like everyone else. Q: What do you think will be Mandela’s legacy? A: There are still massive issues in South Africa, as there are in other countries, but he had a huge influence. When I left the stadium I saw white faces and black faces celebrating their victory. If you had said to me when I …

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A history of British sport
type: item
date: 2012-02-06T10:25:05.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Cricket
subject: Cycling
subject: Football
subject: Rugby
description: On 6 May 1954, Roger Bannister broke the world mile record and the four-minute barrier at the Iffley Road Track in Oxford, completing the distance in 3 mins 59.4 seconds – a huge achievement for British sport. Here, Professor Tony Collins discusses ten locations linked to the development of sport in Britain over the past 200 years – from Much Wenlock to Stamford Bridge
encoded: This article was first published in the February 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine The British, it’s often said, have a particular genius for inventing sports and games. Considering how many of these sports and games turn out to have evolved elsewhere in the world too, this may or may not be true. However, we can be certain about one thing: the British invented modern sports in all their money-drenched and over-hyped glory. To put that another way, you can trace a direct line from Britons setting down recognised rules for horse racing, boxing and cricket through to football’s World Cup, the Indian Premier League and the modern Olympic Games. “Although most countries have variations of folk tradition sports, which can range from hitting a ball with a bat through to mob forms of football through to maypole dancing – traditions that are very rooted in rural, agricultural lifestyles – Britain was the first place to develop what we would see today as codified, organised and commercialised sports,” says Tony Collins of De Montfort University in Leicester. It’s a story that begins in earnest in the 18th century. “The reason why Britain developed these sports was it was the first nation to become an industrial, capitalist economy where people had disposable income,” comments Collins. “There was the wealth to generate both an interest in sports and also markets for sports.” From the off then, money was central to sport’s growth. It’s no coincidence that this was also an era when, especially in a south-east growing prosperous as the centre of empire, the theatre grew in popularity and newspapers began to flourish. Beginning with the aristocracy, Britons were discovering the joys of leisure time. This meant games played for high stakes and gambling. Cricket matches with prize money of 1,000 guineas weren’t unheard of. Predating today’s ‘in-game’ wagers, on-site bookies would even offer odds on individual batsman’s scores. If this doesn’t tally with the familiar idea of stolid…

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