LIKE CRICKET TESTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 985, 30 May 1930, Page 9

LIKE CRICKET TESTS

EARLY RUGBY MATCHES DRAWN AFTER FIVE DAYS! Football matches at Rugby School in the early part of last century must have been like the present-day timelimit Test matches with Australia (says an English writer>. On reading the rules drafted in 1840, we find that ••all matches are drawn after five days, j or after three days if no goal has been j kicked.” These rules of th© game of football ! as played at Rugby School at that time j are one of the many notable features i of the "Football Records of Rugby School” (1823-1929), and from material collected for the Old Rugbeian Society by a sub-committee which includes such famous players as Adrian Stoop and H. J. Kittermaster. Th© book reveals that for a long time after William Webb Ellis's epochmaking feat of running with the ball in his hands, football at Rugby School remained in a chaotic state, with apparently no limit to the numbers of players who could participate in a match. From 1850 onwards the organisation improved, and in 1567, the first match j with an "outside” team was played j The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw the gradual disappearance of the old Rugby School rules, those of the Rugby Football Union (founded in 1871) being adopted.