Chapter 5 "The distinctive feature"?

Much is made of the claim that running with the ball is the distinctive feature of rugby as distinct from soccer, but in 1820, when there were no inter-school games, each school developed its own version of football, all with their own distinctive features. Most such games have been dropped in favour of modern standardised sports (though the Eton Wall Game still survives, for example).

We must also remember that soccer and rugby were not distinct games at that time. Everybody considered that they were playing "football" and merely accepted that there were different versions. Even as late as 1871, (the FA was founded in 1863) when the first rugby international took place, it was seen as being the third match in a series between England and Scotland - the first two of which happened to be played under Association rules.

And, of course, even within each school the game could change from one generation of players to the next. However each school did tend to have a distinctive basic style of its own as the following synopsis (for about 1850) shows.

As can be seen, all games allowed the use of hands, if only to stop the ball. What would a contemporary of Bloxam's, transferring perhaps from another school, have regarded as distinctive about the Rugby game?

Before the game even started, he would have noticed the unique H-shaped goal posts, and would have learned that "it won't do just to kick the ball through these posts, it must go over the cross bar; any height'll do, so long as it's between the posts", as East described it to Tom Brown, eponymous hero of Thomas Hughes' well-known book.

When the game started, he would have seen scrummages and mauls, involving much pushing and heaving, kicking and hacking, the ball being somewhere in the middle.

If the ball rolled out of such a press of boys, it was kicked, and if it was caught in the air, the catcher could "make his mark". He would then retire a little way, and the opposition could come up to that mark, but not charge him until he started to kick. A player with the ball could be obstructed in some way, though what we would now call tackling was apparently not permitted.

If the mark were near enough to goal, he would attempt a place-kick or drop-kick. For the former, the player would hold the ball just above the ground for another to kick, and the opposition could only charge when the ball was actually touched to the ground - at the last possible second. For the latter, the player would let the ball drop so that it bounced on the ground before he kicked it. A goal could also be scored in what the visitor might regard as a more conventional way - by kicking it off the ground and over the bar. However this was relatively unusual.

If a player catching the ball had run forward with it instead of retiring, it might have been too subtle a breach of the rules for a new-comer, though obvious enough to an experienced Rugbeian. The rules were complex, and as the estimable East tells us "you'll be a month learning them".

For us, soccer is the kicking code, and rugby the handling code; and this was probably true in the 1890s when the famous plaque was researched and written. It is not unreasonable for us to ask how this came about, but we should be wary of assuming that any such distinction was particularly noteworthy at the time of William Webb Ellis.

Page updated 15 August 2002 by Peter Shortell