Talk:William Webb Ellis

message: It is improper to state this as although there is evidence against the claim that he invented rugby it is wrong to state that we know for sure that he didn't.  I therefore reccomend that this is removed and more emphasis be placed on the evidence for and against and allow the readers to decide.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.86.111.53 (talk) 17:23, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: use of the term "incorrectly" in starting statement

message: This whole para needs a rewrite. The one and only source for the Webb Ellis story is Bloxam and his report of an event that he did not witness is so vague as to be next to useless. Any reference to caid is pure speculation. Who are these "some people" anyway? Also with regard to the second para in this section, it is beyond question that the rules of the Rugby game changed regularly with with each intake of boys. The masters did not control the game it was the boys game. Perhaps a good analogy is the game British Bulldog. Most kids in British schools have played the game (or at least they did in my day) but no one has ever seen a set of rules written down and now and again you might introduce a different rule. Jooler 12:59, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: controversy section

message: The intro currently says that soccer was considered ungentlemanly. I suspect the intention is to say that hacking was considered ungentlemanly. --Ettrig (talk) 08:54, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: hacking

message: Hello and sorry for my bad english. I've been at his grave 2 weeks ago. The date of his death is given there as Feb 24th 1872 (as one can see here: :File:Menton BW 2011-06-06 18-32-33.JPG). What is the right date? --Berthold Werner (talk) 15:07, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Having looked at  you appear to be right, and the previous date didn't have any reference, so I've altered it. G-13114 (talk) 15:17, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date of death 

message: Another version is that Rugby Football was developed by a couple of boys who had been present at the Webb Ellis incident, and then passed into Cambridge. One afternoon the two undergraduates were just messing about with a ball, and decided to mimic the incident. Other people joined in, and they all found they'd discovered a good game. 86.178.157.135 (talk) 03:03, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cambridge connection? 

message: The footnote questions the conventional account of Webb Ellis's father; but the Army List for 1810 (for which you can find a rather slow but complete download here) shows that James Ellis acquired a lieutenant's commission in the 3rd Dragoon Guards in September 1809, and near-contemporary references (available on Google Books) confirm that Anne Ellis, his widow, was awarded a military pension on 1st July 1812 "in consideration of his having been killed in Action near Albuera"; not "at" the battle, as the footnote correctly observes, but "near" the place... and a little further Googling reveals that it was in a skirmish on 1st July 1811, six weeks after the battle. Since this is "original research", I don't want to add it to the page directly, but there you go! AJN (talk) 23:26, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Parentage 

message: 'Do not multiply the factors more times than is necessary.' Meaning to say, the simplest explanation is the one that is most likely correct. Which is more likely: the old codger Bloxam fabricates an elaborate tale about how rugby football was originated some 50 years prior, by some random dude that could have been Joe Blow as far as he or anyone else was concerned, who went to that school at that time. Except he says 1824, and Ellis no longer attended after 1823, and Bloxam, after going to such lengths to fabricate this story doesn't even bother to double check to make sure hes got his years correct. 
OR. He actually did hear the story as he stated he heard it, from some person decades earlier, which had been, for some stretch of time, been a local legend of sorts, spread by word of mouth. There was nothing about Ellis that was otherwise noteworthy, so it makes no logical sense that such a story would be concocted about a nonnotable person if it had no basis of a real event whatsoever. Furthermore, the locals at the time had no CRYSTALBALL, and did not know that rugby football would become a global sport in its own right, so ..WHY would anyone have bothered to document in writing this local anecdote about how the local version of football began when this particular nonnotable person who attended there in such and such year picked up the ball and ran with it? this is not the kind of thing that typically makes one think, 'BY JOVE, I think that a half century from now this will be a matter of significant national and global interest! I must document his at once!'
As for the 1895 investigation.... You are trying to find witnesses of a particular SCHOOL BOYS' FOOTBALL GAME, SEVENTY-TWO years later, by which time any such witnesses that aren't already dead will be around 85 to 90 years in age. 'No witnesses were found.' REALLY. Ya THINK? Smh. 
Pity it is that no Englishman is capable of being neutral on these kinds of matters. The result being that nearly every Englishman that's not from Rugby will be have made up his mind that the legend is pure fiction, logic be dammed. And therefore, a neutral article here will likely never be possible. Firejuggler86 (talk) 10:01, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Occam's razor