page_title: Rugby football
hierarchical_section_title: Rugby football
caption_attribution_description: English: Football match on Shrove Tuesday 1846 in Kingston on Thames, Surrey, England
context_page_description: Rugby football is a collective name for the family of team sports of rugby union and rugby league, as well as the earlier forms of football from which both games, Association football, Australian rules football, and Gridiron football evolved. Canadian football, and to a lesser extent American football were also broadly considered forms of rugby football but are seldom now referred to as such.
  Rugby football started about 1845 at Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, although forms of football in which the ball was carried and tossed date to medieval times. Rugby split into two sports in 1895, when twenty-one clubs split from the Rugby Football Union to form the Northern Rugby Football Union in the George Hotel, Huddersfield, over broken-time payments to players who took time off from work to play the sport, thus making rugby league the first code to turn professional and pay players. Rugby union turned professional one hundred years later in 1995, following the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa. The respective world governing bodies are World Rugby and the Rugby League International Federation.
context_section_description: Rugby football is a collective name for the family of team sports of rugby union and rugby league, as well as the earlier forms of football from which both games, Association football, Australian rules football, and Gridiron football evolved. Canadian football (Grey Cup still has "Rugby Football" written on it), and to a lesser extent American football were also broadly considered forms of rugby football but are seldom now referred to as such.
  Rugby football started about 1845 at Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, although forms of football in which the ball was carried and tossed date to medieval times. Rugby split into two sports in 1895, when twenty-one clubs split from the Rugby Football Union to form the Northern Rugby Football Union (later renamed the Rugby Football League in 1922) in the George Hotel, Huddersfield, over broken-time payments to players who took time off from work to play the sport, thus making rugby league the first code to turn professional and pay players. Rugby union turned professional one hundred years later in 1995, following the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa. The respective world governing bodies are World Rugby (rugby union) and the Rugby League International Federation (rugby league).
  Rugby football was one of many versions of football played at English public schools in the 19th century. Although rugby league initially used rugby union rules, they are now wholly separate sports, with Rugby league being much more similar to Gridiron football. In addition to these two codes, both American and Canadian football evolved from rugby football in the beginning of the 20th century.
caption: Football match in the 1846 Shrove Tuesday in Kingston upon Thames, England
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot A530", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "ACD Systems Digital Imaging", "Image DateTime": "2006:08:30 21:36:28", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "225", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "2961", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5482", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/13", "EXIF FNumber": "13/5", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2006:08:30 21:30:07", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2006:08:30 21:30:07", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "59/16", "EXIF ApertureValue": "11/4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "11/4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "80", "EXIF FocalLength": "29/5", "EXIF SubSecTime": "859", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2052", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1616", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "2865", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "11520", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "81000/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}