History
The first rugby match in Argentina was played in 1873, in the Buenos Aires Cricket Club field sited in Palermo neighborhood. Only 24 players (all of them were English) could met to dispute the match. The teams were named "Bancos" ("Banks" in Spanish) and "Ciudad" ("City") and formed with 11 and 13 players respectively.
That same year, another match was played in the polo field of Flores, Buenos Aires, in a land property of the Unzué family. The teams were called "Inglaterra" ("England") and "El Mundo" ("The World"). The first team was formed by Royal Navy officers that were temporarily in Buenos Aires, with the addition of some English citizens who resided in Argentina. Its rival was formed by English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish people plus some Argentine-born players with English ancestors.
On May 14, 1874, the England Rugby Union rules were adopted to play rugby in Argentina. Those rules were used for the first time during the match disputed at Buenos Aires Cricket Club between two teams from that institution. The teams were called "El bando del Sr. Trench", and "El Bando del Sr. Hogg".
It was 26 years later, in 1899, that four clubs in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires got together to form the River Plate Rugby Football Union.
The sport requested an affiliation with the Argentine Olympic Committee (COI), who advised them to add Argentina to their name and so they became the Union Argentina de Rugby (UAR) on 29 November 1951.
This body, one of the oldest rugby unions in the world, became a member of the International Rugby Board (IRB) after being invited to the inaugural Rugby World Cup in 1987.
When the rest of the rugby union world went professional in 1995, the UAR decided to keep the game in Argentina amateur. Argentine players who opt to go overseas to play professionally (historically in Italy and France, with an increasing number today playing in England) remain eligible for national team selection (although this was not originally the case), and the current national team is heavily, though not exclusively, made up of European-based players.
Read more about this topic: Argentine Rugby Union
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... all big changes in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)