The Biggest Myths About Rugby, Debunked

The Biggest Myths About Rugby, Debunked

In this video we will look at 5 of the most common rugby myths that everyone believes but are in fact not true. I hope you enjoy!

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When I was but a wee lad I remember being sat down and told the story of how rugby was born out of Rugby High School by a boy called William Webb Ellis who decided to pick up the football and run with it. It was even the opening video for the 2015 Rugby World Cup. But there's about as much evidence to support this as there is for the SRU being competent. There are so many conflicting reports of how the sport was created that the only thing that is for certain is that William Webb Ellis did not spontaneously invent the game when he picked up the ball and ran with it. In fact at this time it common in most codes of football to handle the ball.
The Rules of Rugby Football were made by the students and were discussed almost every time they went out to play. This was until 1846 when W.D. Arnold, W.W. Shirley and F. Hutchins first wrote the rules of Rugby football which allowed the sport to grow beyond the School. The facts are that no single person created Rugby Football and these 3 boys had far more to do with what the sport has become than William Webb Ellis ever did.

To add onto this point is the age of Rugby. When I was at school my PE teacher asked our class what sport was older Rugby or Football? And he said that it was football. He was telling this in the context of football being association football But to discover the true birth of the game it is important to differentiate semantics. People will commonly refer to Association Football as just football. This has created confusion with what the term “football” means. The term football simply means that it is a ball sport played standing on your feet and has nothing to do with what part of the body you use to play the game with. This is why there are so many Sports around the world called football that barely involve kicking the ball such as rugby and gridiron football. The first rules of association football were in 1863 17 years after the rules of rugby. So by that mantra Rugby is the older sport. To say rugby was formed from football is correct as football has been a term used for centuries. The first known use of it was in 1447 when it was banned in Scotland by James II but the Colloquial understanding of the story is not true. And Rugby football is most certainly not younger than Association football like is so commonly told.

When I was at the pub watching the six nations earlier this year heard an older rugby fans talk about how much better it was in their day when scrums were shorter and players only kicked as a last option. But what if I told you kicking has decreased over the last 30 years? in the 1995 Rugby World Cup the average game had 60 kicks where as in the 2019 world cup it was only at about 45 or 46 kicks per match a 22% drop. Over the same period of time ball in play time has gone up meaning that kicks per minute of ball in play has dropped by 38%. Showing us the amount of kicking and the frequency of kicking over the last 30 years has drop significantly. But I will say he didn’t add what type of kicks these are. A grubber kick or spiral bomb is far more interesting to watch than 2 teams firing it from 22 to 22.

Due to rugby league not being especially popular outside of the north of England and Australia you may be forgiven for thinking it had little impact on Rugby union at all. Well at the start of the leagues formations in 1895 it had a huge impact. England started losing more test matches without the uncompromising Yorkshire and Lancashire forwards. This lead to an 18 year dry spell between Home Nations Championship wins a competition which is now known as the 6 nations and a humiliating 26-3 defeat to Wales, a team that England would normally beat.

ok I like to laugh at England as much as the next person but they weren’t the first host nation to get knocked out at a world cup group stage. In 1991 the World Cup was hosted by England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France (Jesus that's a mouthful). In this tournament Wales had a shock 16 – 13 defeat to Western Samoa which saw them finish 3rd in pool 3 meaning they did not qualify for the quarter-finals. So Wales were actually the first host nation to be knocked out at the pool stages. (One more thing to laugh at the welsh about I guess)

#rugby #rugby2022 #rugbymyths #rugbylies #rugbyunion #williamwebbellis #rugbykick #englishrugby #englishrugby #rugbyworldcup #sportsmyths #rugbyunion2022

[Hugh_de_Mortimer]

My personal theory is that Thomas Arnold created a game with running with the ball in hand but wanted to create the legend that it was the boys' game so decided upon an old boy who complied with Arnold's Muscular Christianity, so Arnold created the story about Webb Ellis and so the legend was born.

[New_World_Rugby]

Damn. Your channel is lit. I love it

[Hhhh-cdkf]

Great videos there is no other rugby content like this

[joatmofa]

... "But there's about as much evidence to support this as there is for the SRU being competent."... LMAO - you could just replace the words "SRU" with "World Rugby" - you'd be 1000% correct!