As a sport played globally, no country can truly claim to be the home of rugby union. However, considering it was in England at the Rugby School where student William Webb Ellis was reportedly the first to pick up and run with the ball during a game of football, England can at least claim to be the birthplace of the sport. During the mid-nineteenth century, the sport grew outside of educational institutions and clubs formed across the United Kingdom and what is today the Republic of Ireland. With the popularization of rugby came the need to codify the sport with a fixed set of rules, which led to the establishment of rugby’s first governing body, the Rugby Football Union (RFU) in England in 1871. Within the next 10 years, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales all followed suit in establishing their own national governing bodies, and in 1883 these nations competed for the first time in rugby’s oldest international tournament, the Home International Championship, which is today known as the
.
How many individuals play rugby union?
Despite its long-running affinity with the sport, there has been a decline in participation in rugby union in England in recent years, with the
share of children playing rugby union in England dropping to around eight percent during the 2022/23 school year. In Scotland meanwhile,
rugby union participation rates among Scottish men have also dropped, however, interest among women has spiked with the number of Scottish women playing the sport nearly doubling between 2018 and 2023. There has also been a healthy growth in
adults playing rugby union in Wales in recent years, which comes as no surprise when considering that Wales ranked as the
country with the most interest in the Six Nations championship in a survey of 2023. Across the Irish Sea, rugby union is currently enjoying a golden era, particularly in the men’s professional game, with the Irish national team completing a Grand Slam in the 2023 Six Nations. This has vindicated Sport Ireland’s decision to
increase its annual investment to the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) by around 39 percent in 2022.
What issues are currently surrounding rugby union?
With the
brand value of the English, Irish, and Welsh rugby governing bodies all exceeding 100 million euros, it is imperative for them to protect the integrity of rugby union, as well as safeguard the sport’s biggest asset at both the grassroots and professional level; its players. Regarding the integrity of the sport, rugby union is joint top in the
list of sports with the most anti-doping rule violations in the UK. Despite the sport’s problem with performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), the
number of anti-doping test performed by the RFU and the
volume of tests carried out for PEDS by the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) both decreased in the 2022/23 season compared to 2019/20. When it comes to safeguarding those playing rugby union, preventing head injuries with long-term consequences is one of the sport’s current main priorities. Although most attention has been given to professional players suffering from degenerative brain diseases, head injuries are also prevalent at the grassroots level, as illustrated by the
number of concussions among amateur Irish male rugby union players nearly doubling between 2018/19 and 2022/23. In response to the sport’s problem with head injuries, national rugby union governing bodies around the world introduced a lower tackle height in 2023.
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