Two hundred years ago in 1823, at a school football match on the Close at Rugby School, William Webb Ellis of Town House ‘picked up the football, and with a fine disregard for the rules, ran with it’ thus inventing the game of rugby football, as played throughout the world to this day!
Rugby Football started in 1823 and continued at the school until 1846 when a book of rules was sanctioned by a Levee of ‘Big Side’. The Rugby Football Union was formed in 1871 when the rules of the game, as known to Rugbeians, were formally shaped into the laws of the game. In between these years, Rugby School boys travelled back and forth from home to universities and hospitals introducing the game and forming clubs up and down the country.
The Club was officially formed in 1873 when affiliation to the RFU was formally registered, although research suggests that it was much earlier, influenced by the ex-Town House boys of Rugby School.
The Rugby Football Union has since confirmed that, the latest recorded formation of the Rugby Football Club was in 1867, when ‘Rugby had 50 members and played at Clifton Road, which is half a mile from the Railway Station.’
Over the decades, the Rugby Football Club has had more than its share of ‘ups and down’ - from the record-breaking season under skipper Keith Vivian in 1955/56 to the lows of recent past when an aborted takeover of the club failed to materialise, plunging the club into the lower echelons of the game.
The club reached one of its peaks in the late eighties when teamwork both on and off the pitch, culminated in promotion to the First Division of the National Leagues. In between and beyond those boundaries, some of the finest players have graced Webb Ellis Road, from internationals from the Home Nations to antipodean stars from down under.
The Rugby Football Club is unique in that it bears the name of the game itself. No other Club has that honour. There is no better motto for the Club than that of the Rugby Borough Council itself, ‘Floreat Rugbeia’ – Let Rugby Flourish!
