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Rugby Origins and Tradition
 
How the game began
Rugby is the one of the finest games in the world, with a long, proud, and incident-packed history. The world's oldest club, (Guy's Hospital in London) has already celebrated its 150th anniversary, and the first international match (Scotland v. England) took place as long ago as 1871. Since then rugby has thrived and spread so that the game is now played in at least 130 countries worldwide.
How the game has evolved from its European roots is a fascinating and somewhat convoluted tale. Games with some similarities to both modern soccer and rugby have existed for over 2000 years. Most of these games seem to have involved great crowds of players wrestling, shoving and kicking to propel or carry a stuffed animal stomach from one end of town to the other. There were usually few rules, and any number could play. Games often took place on some annual holiday to settle a local rivalry.
The authorities usually did not approve. Kings and princes commanded their subjects not to waste time with football but spend it more profitably in military training. Football matches were regarded as a public nuisance, with violence, vandalism and disorder of every kind often accompanying the heaving mass of players. England, Scotland and France all had laws banning football in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Football survived nonetheless. Indeed, a few of the traditional village-against-village matches still take place in various places in the British Isles, with members of local rugby clubs frequently among the enthusiastic participants. Football survived because people, usually men, enjoyed it and because some in authority thought it had good qualities. Richard Mulcaster, headmaster of a school in London, published a book in 1581 that decried the violence of the game but argued that it might promote fitness and well being if more carefully regulated. Around the same time, a book originally published in Italy described the game of calcio, which was played in Florence, as 'very good to breed up youth to run, leap and wrastle [sic]'.
There is no doubt that the changes that transformed these various types of free-for-all into a regulated sport began in the English public (private) schools of the 1800s. School matches in those days were always internal affairs, with different groupings of boys from within the school making up the teams. In many schools, every boy on the roll was expected to attend and play in some way, whatever his age or size. Any organization required was created by the boys themselves, entirely unsupervised by the masters, and each school developed its own method of how the game should be played. There were no written rules, and any necessary procedures would follow from established custom, as enforced, and on occasion modified, by the oldest and biggest boys at the particular time.
At Rugby School in 1823 there were only a few boys in the senior class. One seemingly rather unpopular senior boy took advantage of this situation to put his own mark on the game. Quite simply, he cheated and was big enough to get away with it, although his official memorial at the school puts things rather differently. Commemorating this event is a plaque at Rugby School, which reads:
THIS STONE COMMEMORATES THE EXPLOIT OF WILLIAM WEBB ELLIS
WHO WITH A FINE DISREGARD FOR THE RULES OF FOOTBALL
AS PLAYED IN HIS TIME FIRST TOOK THE BALL IN HIS ARMS
AND RAN WITH IT THUS ORIGINATING
THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURE OF THE RUGBY GAME. A.D. 1823
No one actually knows if the traditional story of how rugby began is true. It came to be told in the 1880s and 1890s, after rugby had become formally established, when former pupils of Rugby School tried to research how the game had developed. Of course, by then, few of Webb Ellis's contemporaries were still alive and Webb Ellis himself had died in France in 1872. What certainly is true is that running with the ball in hand was accepted in the first written set of laws produced by the Rugby boys in 1845.
By that time, former pupils and teachers of Rugby School had helped begin the spread of the game elsewhere. One former pupil, Arthur Pell, tried to establish a football club at Cambridge University in 1839 but did not get very far at first because the Cambridge men came from such a variety of schools that they could not agree on which playing rules to adopt. A club was successfully formed among the students at Guy's Hospital in London in 1843, making it the world's oldest. Matches using the Rugby School rules also began to take place regularly elsewhere, including Oxford University.
Some Rugby old boys found their way to university in Ireland. The world's second rugby club, at Trinity College, was formed in Dublin in 1854. The first matches were again internal ones, contested by teams from among the club's membership. Towns in the Scottish borders also had a long tradition of football-type games, and similar games to those held in the English public schools were also being played in some Edinburgh schools in the early 1800s. The first adult club in Scotland, Edinburgh Academicals, was founded in 1858. The longest running fixture in the history of the game, which was first played in 1858 and still takes place, is between two of the Edinburgh area schools, Edinburgh Academy and Merchiston Castle. The Merchiston captain in the first game against Edinburgh Academy also featured in the first recorded match in the British territory of South Africa, which took place in 1862. The player's name was A. van der Bijl, and the teams involved were Civilians versus Military. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the British Empire was at its height, and old boys of Rugby School and others who knew the game soon spread it throughout the empire and elsewhere as they took up careers in business, public service or the military.
The game arrived in America from overseas, and various American universities played rough-and-ready football-type games as far back as about 1840, but they must have been violent affairs, for the game was banned at Harvard in 1860. Rutgers and Princeton Colleges played a 25-a-side game in 1869 that has been described as America's first rugby match, but it would be more accurate to regard it as the first-ever game of American football. Harvard did play Canada's McGill University in a genuine rugby match in 1874, while the Canadians were on what was perhaps the first overseas rugby tour. In 1880, American football rules were formalized, and the two games began to diverge.
Aspects of the rules of American football made serious injuries and even fatalities quite common in the early days, however, and President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to ban the game in 1905 unless rule changes were made. The rules were duly modified, but in California, football was still forbidden for some years. Colleges took to rugby instead. From 1905 to 1913 there were regular domestic matches as well as tours both to and from Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand sent a full-strength All Blacks squad to California in 1913, and they were unbeaten in 13 games. These one-sided matches are said to have helped turn the Californians back towards American football.
Some American rugby was played after World War I, however, especially in the Olympic Games. The United States took the Olympic gold in 1920, beating the only other entrant, 'France', in reality a Paris select team, 8-0 in Antwerp. In 1924 Stanford University formed the US team to defend the title in France. There were only three entrants, and the Americans beat Romania 39-0 and then France 17-3 in the final. Rugby then ceased to be an Olympic sport, and as reigning champions and two-time winners the United States is the top Olympic rugby nation.
These were one-off successes, though, and rugby remained a minor sport. Nonetheless, enthusiasts kept the game going and in 1975 formed a national union. Since then, rugby has grown in popularity. A national club competition was set up in 1983 and was first won by Old Blues of California. The United States has also developed a regular rivalry with Canada, with matches played every year since 1977. The United States won the second Can-Am match in 1978, but Canada is comfortably ahead in the series. Today, the game is continuing to be developed domestically through the USA Rugby Super League, featuring the top club sides in the country.

- Excerpts from The Encyclopedia of Rugby Union by Donald Sommerville, 1997, Aurum Press.

 The Rugby Attitude
The following is an article that was in in the English Daily Telegraph soon after the 2003 Rugby World Cup win by England.  It extolls the virtues of rugby, and the attitudes of those who play and follow it and compares it to the current situation in England with soccer and its followers.  There are edits (in blue) to make the article  understandable to Americans!
If rugby woos the soccer fans, it will be a disaster for the nation
By William Langley
(Filed: 30/11/2003)
As a reminder of what the embrace of the masses can do to the fortunes of an otherwise decent game it is worth recalling that 121 years ago the FA Cup [soccer] Final was won by Old Etonians [a prestigious English private school that prince William and Prince Harry attended] 1-0 against Blackburn Rovers, with the OEs' captain, Arthur Kinnaird, arriving at the Oval in an open-topped charabanc pulled by his fans. Nearly all sports have been elitist at one time. Only a few have had the sense or good luck to stay that way.
Football [soccer] has been heading downhill for decades. The World Cup win [by England] of 1966 did little to slow the slide. Today soccer represents the greatest single stain on our national character; a game at which we are embarrassingly second-rate and getting worse, played by men of fathomless vanity, stupidity and selfishness, and supported by some of the ugliest and nastiest individuals on earth.
All week [following the rugby world cup final win by England], bathed in the rosy glow of victory pundits have been talking about rugby union's chances of replacing football [soccer] as our [England’s] number one sport. It cannot be allowed to happen. Excessive popularity and the profligate spending of delinquent television executives would wreck rugby as surely as they have scuppered soccer. The game's extraordinarily high standards of sportsmanship, discipline, camaraderie and valour survive, indeed thrive, because only a relative few are ever likely to aspire to them.
These are unfashionable values. They may be burnished on the field of play, but they are forged elsewhere; around the hearths of solid, traditional families, and in those schools - mostly, but far from exclusively, in the independent [private] sector - where rugby is cherished.
One of football's [soccer’s] basic afflictions is that it has become an excuse for an education. Boys from working-class backgrounds see no point in learning anything when there is a chance that football will toss them £50,000 [~$75,000] a week, a mock-Tudor mansion and a Malibu-guzzling blonde in a Bentley. A huge proportion of what might be called football's [soccer’s] natural intake achieve nothing in school, and as a consequence it is considered normal, even appropriate, for professional players to be so chronically under-educated as to be barely able to express simple sentiments of happiness or disappointment. The handful of boys who make it are talent-spotted and apprenticed at an absurdly young age, and enter the game believing they need never exercise their minds again.
Rugby, by contrast, is a part of an education. The schools that foster it will almost certainly be among the best of their kind. The boys that play it are more likely to grow up confident, well-behaved (at least when sober), popular and trusted. Rugby is one of the reasons why desperate parents will pay good money, move home and pawn their heirlooms to avoid the bog standards of the state [UK government] sector.
There is a general crisis of sport in schools for which only the independent [non government] sector currently offers anything like a remedy. An astounding two-thirds of medals won by Britons at the 2000 Sydney Olympics went to privately-educated athletes. Strip out (with no disrespect intended) our black sprinters from the inner-city comprehensives, and the independent schools have a virtual monopoly on sporting excellence. As state schools have increasingly given up on sport, such institutions are now the only places where talent has any opportunity to flourish. It almost goes without saying that a substantial majority of England's World Cup winning rugby squad come from independent schools.
The rot is too deep to be easily reversed. Under financial and bureaucratic pressure many state (government) schools feel unable to organise games on any worthwhile level. Headmasters increasingly fear litigation arising from injury - especially with highly physical games such as rugby - and a depressing number of teachers still cling to the notion that children are psychologically damaged by competition.
The Government doesn't care. Footie's [soccer] all that matters, innit? New Labour's sporting priorities were established when the Prime Minister claimed to have sat behind the goal at St James's Park, watching his "teenage hero" Jackie Milburn playing for Newcastle United. In fact, Blair was four years old and living in Australia when Milburn retired. And in those days there were no seats behind the goals.
The one promising Government appointment to be made in the past six years was of Kate Hoey as sports minister. It took her no time to identify what was going wrong. Demanding a return to "ethics, morality and decency", she tore into the greed and indiscipline that football exemplified. "Schoolteachers write to me saying that this is what children in their playgrounds are mimicking," she said. "People in other sports don't let it happen. I certainly don't see it in rugby."
She was absolutely right, you don't see it in rugby. The game's ethos, while closely held, is encouragingly contagious. Consider these remarkable statistics; a seven-week tournament, [The 2003 rugby world cup recently concluded in Australia and won by England] 40,000 England fans, countless million pints, three arrests. Not all those fans spent their formative years in the draughty dormitories of our better boarding schools. Yet virtually to a man and woman they behaved impeccably, brought credit upon themselves and their country, and had a wonderful time in the process.
How was such a thing possible when our abiding image of England's presence in major sports events is of massed hooligans being hosed off the streets? Essentially because the rugby fans were taking their cue from the game itself. Rugby is rough, loud and elemental, but it generally minds its manners. It can be thrilling to watch but would never garland itself with fatuous accolades like "the beautiful game". Its players tend to be a mixture of the yeomanry and the cavalry. You can imagine Martin Johnson [the England rugby captain] leading a pikestaff charge at Crecy while Jonny Wilkinson [the England fly half and hero who slotted over a drop goal in the last twenty seconds of overtime to win the game for England by three points], spurs twinkling, gallops over the dewy sward.
With such imagery to draw on, it is easy to deride rugby's survival as an outpost of sporting decency. On radio talk shows last week, callers were queueing up to denounce it as a "toffs” [elitist] game" that no soccer lover could understand or conceivably want to play. Good. There is almost nothing that football has done wrong that English rugby hasn't done right. It has turned professional without losing its poise, it has subtly spread its appeal beyond its traditional middle-class base (take, as an example, Jason Robinson, raised fatherless, on a tough Leeds council estate), avoided the kind of scandal that engulfs soccer on a near-daily basis, and won the biggest prize of all. The need now is to keep it alive in the schools. For while only a few may play it, all can cheer for its standards.

 Cambridge vs. Oxford - The Varsity match - yesterday and today
The tradition and the teams
The second Tuesday in December is one of Twickenham's great occasions - the Varsity Match, Oxford against Cambridge, Dark Blues against Light Blues. This year the match is expected to have greater impetus than ever in the wave of rugby euphoria sweeping England in the wake of the World Cup victory, celebrated with huge joy in London on Monday, the day before the 122nd match.
It will be a happy occasion, in fact the occasion is often better than the match. Last year's match was cold but exciting as underdogs Cambridge denied Oxford a fourth successive victory. The year before that it had been a soggy match without tries as Oxford won 9-6.
The weather forecast for this year is overcast with a maximum of 11ºC and a wind. Last year there was a crow of 42,000. Expect more this year for the first Twickenham occasion since World Cup glory.
The Varsity Match is a match as old as the Rugby Football Union, for the first one was played on February 10, 1872, the year after the RFU was founded, the year the first rugby international was played. Only World Wars have stopped it since then.
As the men from various public schools, each with his own brand of football, wanted to continue playing at university, so there was a search for a common set of rules. Cambridge codified them first.
Then the Rugby Football Union (RFU) was formed and, as its name implies, they settled on the rules as observed at Rugby School.
The games were first played by interest groups at the universities. Man's competitive nature required one step higher and soon the universities were playing each other at rugby, as they were already doing at cricket.
The initiative for the first match came from Cambridge. They sent a man from Trinity College to Trinity College at Oxford to get the ball rolling. The first match was played 20-a-side. Oxford's 20 comprised 16 Old Rugbeians and four from Marlborough. Rugger was uppercrust.
Cambridge arrived by train but without their captain, IC Lambert who had studies to see to. Oxford played in dark blue, as they still do, Cambridge in pink, later changed to light blue, as it is today.
For the second match at Cambridge, also in February, Oxford arrived with only 13 men. They borrowed a Cambridge man and played 14-a-side, thus avoiding the superstition of have 13 players. From 1875 onwards the teams played 15-a-side.
The third match was played in December, as it has been intended to be ever since. In fact. the 1878 and the 1879 matches were played the following February because on each occasion the field was frozen.
Oxford won the first match, Cambridge the second and the next two were drawn. And so it went on, up and down, till recently when Cambridge sprinted ahead with a succession of victories in the Nineties.
After the turn of last century Oxford enjoyed the influx of talented sportsman, fulfilling the then requirement of Rhodes Scholarship by indulging in manly pursuits. A Rhodes Scholar, they said, had to be a cross between Christ and Tarzan. Of late the scholars have been more Einstein than either, and Cambridge has enjoyed unprecedented runs of success. Smart money backs Cambridge, as is the case with the boat race.
The match had been losing its impetus and then in 1976 Bowring, the insurance company, took over sponsorship and marketing, maturer students with strong rugby qualifications, began reappearing from various parts of the globe, and the grand occasion was back. The teams played for the Bowring Bowl.
This year, for the third time, the teams will play for the MMC (Marsh and McLennnan Companies) Trophy. Bowring merged with Marsh and McLennan in 1980.
The West Carpark is full again, balloons up from the car's aerial, Vincent's and Hawke's ties abound, Fortnum and Mason hampers are there again complete with champers, there is the bonhomie of relived student days. And that night there is the Varsity Ball at the Café Royal. And the players get Blues.
Before 1882 Blues were awarded for rowing, cricket and athletics. That year permission was granted the Oxford rugby people to award Blues. From 1884 Cambridge awarded Blues, but the rugby club decided it unilaterally, thus annoying the Blues committee. But the matter was debated in the Cambridge Union, which decided in favour of rugby Blues. Blues are awarded only for competition between Oxford and Cambridge. Play all season and miss that match and there is no Blue for you, sorry old man.
The captains pick their team. Oxford puts its list up in the window of Elmer Cotton's shop in The Thurl, Cambridge in the window of Ryder and Amies in King's parade.
The teams would move to London on Monday, Cambridge to the Petersham Hotel in Richmond, Oxford to the Lensbury Club on the Thames at Teddington.
The first match was played at The Parks in Oxford, the second at Parker's Piece in Cambridge. After that the teams played on neutral grounds. The Kennington Oval was used, then Blackheath's ground, then, from 1887 to 1920, the Queen's Club in Kensington. Twickenham was first used in 1921 and has been the venue ever since.
When the teams played at Blackheath there were no changerooms. Both teams used to meet at the Prince of Wales pub and change there, before walking, wearing coats and scarves, the mile to the ground. After the match they would return to the pub, wash in washhandbasins and then catch the train back to London.
The players are all bona fide students - well, registered as such. In 1885 the rule was introduced that a player could play for only four years after matriculation.
More so in the past than nowadays when rugby is a full-time profession for many in high places, the two universities had an enormous effect on the development of the game, as a game. Many Oxbridge men went on to play international rugby and hold high positions in the rugby world.
There have been some unusual matches.
Once at the Queen's Club the chimneys in the pavilion caught light and belched smoke across the pitch.
The fullback, both centres and a wing in the 1912 Oxford side all came from Bishops school in Cape Town. Two of them were killed in World War I.
The 1919 match at Queen's Club was played in dense fog.
In 1920 the Oxford captain was a South African, Denoon Duncan. He chose Boet Neser, a prop in 1919, at fly-half, a position he had not played. Neser made the first try and scored the last, as Oxford won what became known as Neser's match.
Prince Obolensky, the great Obo who scored two tries in victory for England over the All Blacks, ate a dozen oysters before kick-off. He is the man who introduced light-weight boots into rugby.
The 1953 Oxford side had nine overseas players, a Rhodesian, a New Zealander and seven South Africans. The team was referred to as Springboxford.
The 1981 match was played in several inches of snow. Cambridge won and went ahead of Oxford in the series for the first time since 1872.
In 1990 Toshiyuki Hayashi, who had captained Japan as a lock in 1987 and would be there again for the 1991 World Cup, was a veteran prop for Oxford.
In 1995 a controversial penalty try gave Cambridge a last-minute victory.
The 1996 Varsity Match was a sad one. Ian Tucker, an Australian at Oxford and a member of the team, played against Saracens on October 27 and was so injured in a tackle that he died. As Tucker had usually worn the No.12 jersey, Oxford played that match without one.
The Ian Tucker Memorial Statue stands at Iffley Road, overlooking the Oxford ground. Each year the name of the Best and Fairest player from the Blues XV is inscribed on a plaque on the statue. There is also the Ian Tucker Foundation which provides the Ian Tucker Memorial Bursary for a graduate student at Keble College.
Fifteen of the players who took part in the 1996 Varsity Match were not British.
The 1997 match broke an amiable tradition of 125 years. Till then the previous year's captains acted as touch judges, wearing their university blazers. In 1997 referees ran the line. In that year, too, the referee was appointed, not selected by the universities.
The referee this year is England's Chris White who refereed at the 2003 World Cup, ending his stint with a semi-final match between Australia and New Zealand.
He will not be the only World Cupper on the field. Prop Kevin Tkachuk played for Canada at the World Cup.
There are four South Africans in the Oxford side - Ryan O'Mahoney, John Bradshaw, Anton van Zyl and Tom Hayman.
As they did last year, Oxford start favourites. Last year they lost.
The teams:
Oxford University: 15 Ryan O'Mahoney (Trinity), 14 John Bradshaw (Exeter), 13 Adam Magro (Wolfsen), 12 John Allen (University, captain), 11 Adam Slade (St Anne's), 10 Jonathan Fennell (Pembroke), 9 James Gaunt (Worcester), 8 Thomas Hayman (St Cross), 7 Richard Woods (St Anne's), 6 Peter Raftery (University), 5 Anton van Zyl (Templeton), 4 David Lubans (St Anne's), 3 Henry Nwume (Unhiversity), 2 David Griffiths (St Edmund's Hall), 1 Kevin Tkachuk (Kellog).
Replacements: A Dalgleish (St Anne's), M Street (Kellogg), A Harris (St Cross), B Durham (Keble), G Barr (St Cross), R Lavery (St John's), T Maynard (University).
Cambridge University: 15 Jonathan Ufton (St Edmund's), 14 Charles Desmond (Girton), 13 Ian McInroy (Hughes Hall), 12 Jason Wright (St Edmund's), 11 Neil Toy (St Edmund's), 10 Dafydd Lewis (Hughes Hall), 9 Den Dormer (St Edmund's), 8 Stewart Eru (St Edmund's, captain), 7 Ben Woods (Hughes Hall), 6 Ben Wheeler (St Edmund's), 5 Gavin Webster (St Edmund's), 4 Mathew Hocken (Hughes Hall), 3 Tom Kirkman (St Edmund's), 2 Gareth Forde (Hughes Hall), 1 Rudolf Bosch (St Edmund's),
Replacements: A ABIOS (St Catharine's), W Hughes (Hughes Hall), A Birkby (St Catharine's), N McGarry (Trinity Hall), M Harfoot (St Catharine's), M Bell (St Johns), R Workman (Churchill).
Referee: Chris White (Rugby Football Union)
Kick-off: 14.00 GMT, Tuesday, December 9, 2003
The winners:
1872: Oxford
1873: Cambridge
1873: Draw
1874: Draw
1875: Oxford
1876: Cambridge
1877: Oxford
1879: Draw
1880: Cambridge
1880: Draw
1881: Oxford
1882: Oxford
1883: Oxford
1884: Oxford
1885: Cambridge
1886: Cambridge
1887: Cambridge
1888: Cambridge
1889: Oxford
1890: Draw
1891: Cambridge
1892: Draw
1893: Oxford
1894: Draw
1895: Cambridge
1896: Oxford
1897: Oxford
1898: Cambridge
1899: Cambridge
1900: Oxford
1901: Oxford
1902: Draw
1903: Oxford
1904: Cambridge
1905: Cambridge
1906: Oxford
1907: Oxford
1908: Draw
1909: Oxford
1910: Oxford
1911: Oxford
1912: Cambridge
1913: Cambridge
1914-18: No matches
1919: Cambridge
1920: Oxford
1921: Oxford
1922: Cambridge
1923: Oxford
1924: Oxford
1925: Cambridge
1926: Cambridge
1927: Cambridge
1928: Cambridge
1929: Oxford
1930: Draw
1931: Oxford
1932: Oxford
1933: Oxford
1934: Cambridge
1935: Draw
1936: Cambridge
1937: Oxford
1938: Cambridge
1939-45: No matches
1946: Oxford
1947: Cambridge
1948: Oxford
1949: Oxford
1950: Oxford
1951: Oxford
1952: Cambridge
1953: Draw
1954: Cambridge
1955: Oxford
1956: Cambridge
1957: Oxford
1958: Cambridge
1959: Oxford
1960: Cambridge
1961: Cambridge
1962: Cambridge
1963: Cambridge
1964: Oxford
1965: Draw
1966: Oxford
1967: Cambridge
1968: Cambridge
1969: Oxford
1970: Oxford
1971: Oxford
1972: Cambridge
1973: Cambridge
1974: Cambridge
1975: Cambridge
1976: Cambridge
1977: Oxford
1978: Cambridge
1979: Oxford
1980: Cambridge
1981: Cambridge
1982: Cambridge
1983: Cambridge
1984: Cambridge
1985: Oxford
1986: Oxford
1987: Cambridge
1988: Oxford
1989: Cambridge
1990: Oxford
1991: Cambridge
1992: Cambridge
1993: Oxford
1994: Cambridge
1995: Cambridge
1996: Cambridge
1997: Cambridge
1998: Cambridge
1999: Oxford
2000: Oxford
2001: Oxford
2002: Cambridge
So far 121 matches have been played.
Cambridge has won 57.
Oxford has won 51.
Thirteen matches have been drawn.

 Olympic Link

Rugby's ties to the Olympic movement
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, had close connections with Rugby – the school and the game.
After France was rapidly defeated by the Prussians in double-quick time in 1870, there was concern that French youngsters were turning distinctly soft – unlike that doughty warrior-like breed living across La Manche.
Pierre Frédy - later to become Baron de Coubertin - was only seven when the Prussians overran France - but he enjoyed being taught history by the Jesuits at Collège des Jésuites in Rue de Madrid, Paris, and pondered what the Prussians had done to France and what they had failed to do to Great Britain's overseas possessions.
He grew to admire English education, believing that it had made the difference.
During the 19th century factories, mills and public schools sprang up all over England, and the most influential of educators was Dr Thomas Arnold, a Wykamist and brilliant scholar at Oxford who became headmaster of Rugby School in 1827 when he was 32.
Dr Arnold revolutionised schooling, emphasising moral values and introducing 'way-out' subjects like mathematics. He empowered boys by the introduction of the prefect system and encouraged games - in short, he produced muscular Christians who could run an empire. He stayed at Rugby School until his death in 1842, 21 years before Frédy was born.
Dr Arnold was buried in the chapel at Rugby School. Twenty-five-year-old Frédy, visited it and looked at the tablet. He later wrote: "My eyes fixed on the funeral slab on which, without epitaph, the great name of Thomas Arnold was inscribed. I dreamed that I saw before me the cornerstone of the British Empire."
Though Frédy – obviously – never met Arnold, the good doctor became his hero and Rugby School his inspiration, and all of this led to the formation of the modern Olympic Games and the spirit which De Coubertin hoped to inculcate.
Frédy was born in Paris on 1 January 1863. That was the year the Football Association was formed - the birth of soccer if you like. It was the time when sport took off in Britain and spread to the rest of the world.
This included rugby, whose Rugby Football Union was founded in 1871.
De Coubertin’s investigations at Rugby School, drew from him an unfavourable comparison with French education. He said: “French children are being stuffed with knowledge. They are being turned into walking dictionaries. Even as their intelligence is force fed, the way geese are force fed, their physical strength is being sapped, their moral energy drained."
But it was not just Rugby as a school but rugby as a game that interested him.
In 1892 the French rugby championship came into being. The very first final was played between Racing Club de France and Stade Français at Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne and the very first referee of the very first final was Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
Racing won the match 4-3. Each side scored a try with a conversion, but Racing won because being held in in-goal counted as a point, and Frantz Reichel was so held and thus won the first championship for his side.
Rugby was not De Coubertin’s only interest. He boxed, fenced, rode horses and rowed - and he had an interest in Greek archeology which was then provoking much interest.
When the French were uninterested in educational reform, De Coubertin, the secretary general of France’s sports union, turned to the Olympic idea, partly inspired by the game started by William Brookes in Much Wenlock, Shropshire.
In 1892 he first revealed his plans for a modern Olympics. In 1894 he arranged an international congress which agreed to the restoration of the game and the formation of an International Olympic Committee.
De Coubertin wanted the first games to be held in Paris in 1900 but instead the Greeks grabbed the idea and the first games were held in Athens in 1896 - and they were a great success.
De Coubertin became president of the IOC in 1900, a post he held until 1925. In 1915 he moved the headquarters to Lausanne in Switzerland who were neutral during World War I.
De Coubertin got rugby involved when the games moved to Paris in 1900. Three teams took part – France, Germany and 'Great Britain' (really just some players from Moseley!).
Rugby was at the games again in London in 1908 with Great Britain (in fact, Cornwall) and the touring Wallabies taking part, and in 1920 when the USA and France were rugby’s representatives and again in 1924 when the USA, France and Romania took part.
De Coubertin was no longer IOC President when rugby was dropped for 1928 to make more room for women’s participation.
Russia tried to get it back in 1980 and South Korea in 1988.
Moves have been afoot to get rugby back into the Olympics, if only in the Sevens form, as has happened at the Commonwealth Games.
The chances must now be far better under the new president of the IOC, Jacques Rogge - he played rugby in his youth and was capped 10 times for Belgium!  (This has now been accomplished as rugby's 7-a-side evrsion is set to debut at the 2016 Olympic games, in Sao Paulo, Brazil).
De Coubertin remained in Switzerland for the rest of his life, dying of a heart attack while walking in Park Lagrange in Geneva on 2 December 1937. His body is interred in Lausanne, his heart in the sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia.