page_title: Argentine Rugby Union
section_title: First championship organized
hierarchical_section_title: Argentine Rugby Union / History / First championship organized
caption_attribution_description: English: Act of foundation of the River Plate Rugby Union Championship (current "UAR").
context_page_description: The Argentine Rugby Union is the governing body for rugby union in Argentina. It is a member of World Rugby, with a seat on that body's Executive Council.
  The UAR organises all the national teams, including Senior, U-20, Argentina XV, Sevens and Women's squads and the franchise Jaguares that participates in SANZAAR's Super Rugby competition.
context_section_description: In 1899, clubs Belgrano, Rosario, Lomas, Buenos Aires and Flores founded the "River Plate Rugby Union", naming Leslie William Corry-Smith as President. The body organized the first championship that same year, played by the five founding members. In the inaugural game, Lomas defeated Buenos Aires by 11-4. Lomas would be the first Argentine champion, winning the title at the end of the season.
  The sport requested affiliation with the International Olympic Committee (COI), who advised them to add Argentina to their name and so they became the "Unión Argentina de Rugby" on 29 November 1951.
  This body, one of the oldest rugby unions in the world, became a member of the International Rugby Board (IRB) after being invited to the inaugural Rugby World Cup in 1987.
  When the rest of the rugby union world went professional in 1995, the UAR decided to keep the game amateur. Also, the Buenos Aires clubs split off the UAR and formed the Unión de Rugby de Buenos Aires (URBA), which has the same status as other provincial unions.
  Argentine players who opt to go overseas to play professionally (historically in Italy and France, with an increasing number today playing in England) remain eligible for national team selection (although this was not originally the case). As a result, the national team was heavily, though not exclusively, made up of European-based players. In 2016, the UAR formed the Jaguares team to compete in the Super Rugby. Also, it established a policy of selecting Pumas players from Super Rugby teams only, thereby excluding players from European clubs.
caption: Act of foundation of the "River Plate Rugby Union", 10 April 1899
exif: {"Image Make": "HP", "Image Model": "HP Scanjet 2400", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "600", "Image YResolution": "600", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2019:04:20 21:22:37", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ReferenceBlackWhite": "[0, 255, 128, 255, 128, 255]", "Image ExifOffset": "268", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1058", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "20642", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2017:06:02 01:00:14", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF SubSecTime": "733", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3311", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2988", "EXIF Saturation": "Soft", "EXIF Sharpness": "Soft", "EXIF DeviceSettingDescription": "[1, 0, 19, 0, 32, 32, 32, 48, 65, 48, 32, 32, 32, 55, 65, 48, 32, 32, 32, 56, ... ]"}