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The organisation changed its name again in 2014 to Rugby Europe. [citation needed] Until its eventual merger with the IRB, Rugby Europe was the most multinational rugby organisation in the world, partly because the IRB had concentrated on the Five Nations, Tri Nations, and from 1987 the Rugby World Cup, competitions.
The spread of rugby union as a global sport has its roots in the exporting of the game by British expatriates, military personnel, and overseas university students. The first rugby club in France was formed by British residents in Le Havre in 1872, while the next year Argentina recorded its first game: 'Banks' v 'City' in Buenos Aires. [110]
This timeline lists the foundation dates of the national governing bodies for rugby union—known as rugby unions or federations. The first union was the Rugby Football Union (RFU) that was founded in 1871 to govern rugby union within England. It was founded following the first ever rugby union international, played between England and Scotland ...
Rugby Europe is not responsible for the organisation of the Six Nations Championship, which is run by the national unions of its participating nations. [1] The next level of international rugby, played by tier-2 and tier-3 European countries, is the Rugby Europe International Championships. It is made up of five levels or divisions ...
Unlike in rugby league, no combined British and Irish national rugby union team has ever competed in a major tournament such as the Rugby World Cup.Instead, the British & Irish Lions go on tours to the traditional Southern Hemisphere nations of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, currently occurring on a four-year cycle; the first was an 1888 tour to New Zealand and Australia.
This list shows each country which has a union affiliated to World Rugby, the international governing body for rugby union.It also shows the number of registered clubs playing in each country, official referees and the number of registered players broken down by gender and age group.
In 1995 Ian Roberts became the first high-profile Australian sports person and first rugby footballer in the world to come out to the public as gay. [ 28 ] The 1990s saw the importance of television income to the sport continue to rise, and a battle for control of television rights led to the infamous Super League war , which saw the game split ...
In 2016, PRO Rugby established the first fully professional Rugby competition in the U.S. Also in that year, the English top-flight club London Irish took a home match against Saracens to the Red Bull Arena in the New York area, marking the first top-flight English match ever held outside that country.