The First Written Rules

    The first written rules for the game were written on the 25th August 1845, they were written by three senior pupils at the Rugby School. It took only three days for the three pupils W.D.Arnold, W.W.Shirley and F.Hutchins to submit the 37 rules to the sixth levee, they were immediately passed and a rule book was printed.

Although today instead of there being only 17 pages there are now 95 pages and that does not include the Index, Directives, Under 19 Variations, Referee signals, the Rugby Continuum, and RFU ( Rugby Football Union) Extracts.

Most of these written books remained inside the actual school but some did get outside and to other schools. But it was not until 1862 that external pressure was brought to clarify the rules. Now Universities, emerging clubs and other schools such as Clifton and Marlborough wanted clarification of the rules. The new edition of the rule book began with a plan of the playing field.

One of the original rules that thankfully didn't make it into the modern game was the XX Rule, "All matches are drawn after five days, but after three if no goals has been kicked".

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