11 December 2014 The Official History of Rugby Officials When the Laws of the Game of Rugby Football were agreed following the formation of the RFU in 1871, no provision was made for the use of independent arbiters. Read More
11 December 2014 The Official History of Rugby Officials When the Laws of the Game of Rugby Football were agreed following the formation of the RFU in 1871, no provision was made for the use of independent arbiters. Read More
01 December 2014 Lest We Forget - Francis Eckley Oakeley (England) 01/12/1914 Francis Oakeley was the fifth son of the vicar of Holy Trinity, Hereford. His father James and his mother Frances had 11 children in all. He was educated at the Cathedral School in Hereford from where he went at the age of 13 to the Royal Naval College at Osborne on the Isle of Wight, before transferring two years later to Dartmouth to complete his training. Read More
27 November 2014 Wallabies Feeling Blue The museum has recently acquired a New South Wales (NSW) jersey that was collected by Tom Smith of Leicester during the 1908 Anglo-Welsh (British Lions) tour to Australia and New Zealand. Read More
25 November 2014 Lost and Found - The Asahi Trophy After the annual Australian inter-varsity rugby competition ended in Sydney in 1990 the convenor reported that no trophies had been presented, '…the rugby trophy seems to be lost'. Read More
19 November 2014 The Twickenham Streaker For all the spectacular moments of triumph and despair played out on the Twickenham turf, for some people a selection of the stadium's most memorable moments have been of a rather different variety. Read More
08 November 2014 'Forever England' - Shane Record To commemorate the passing of a century since the outbreak of the First World War the RFU has commissioned a special painting of England's 1914 Grand Slam winning side. Read More
06 November 2014 Lest We Forget - William Darby (Leicester Tigers) 15/09/1915 Over the next four years the World Rugby Museum will be describing the experiences of rugby players during the Great War (1914-1918). 128 full internationals lost their lives to the conflict, alongside thousands more players from local clubs, counties and representative sides. Read More
22 October 2014 The Last Game of Rugby (2029) The following article by Leonard R Tosswill was first published in Rugby Football Weekly in January of 1929. It involves an imagined future (2029) in which women and men played rugby on the same team- women as backs, men as forwards. Read More
17 October 2014 Crossing the Divide, 1908 A recent addition to the Museum's archives throws some fascinating light on a controversial part of rugby's history. 1908 marked a difficult time for English rugby. Read More
15 October 2014 Lest We Forget - James Henry Digby Watson (England) 15/10/1914 James Henry Digby Watson was born in Southsea, Hampshire, and named after his father, who was a Royal Navy engineering officer. His mother Eliza was Canadian. Read More
08 October 2014 CLASSIC MATCH REPORT - France 43-31 New Zealand Wales were the proud hosts of the 1999 Rugby World Cup and, like England in 1991, they chose to share key matches with their neighbours. This meant that Twickenham would be called upon to host several pool matches and both semi-finals. Read More
01 October 2014 The Birth of Rugby Football in China The first Shanghai Football Club was founded 25 November 1867, thereby making it the first rugby club to be established in China. The initial football rules it used were based on those used at Charterhouse School in the UK. Read More