History
In 1871 the Rugby Football Union was formed, the first such organisation for rugby football in the world. However, rugby itself had been slowly but steadily evolving for a number of decades before that point since its inception in the 1820s. The game, with a variety of interpretations over the rules employed, had become popular in many of the public schools of the British Isles and this had extended to the universities as well. The established medical schools of the time were no exception and among the students within these schools was a desire to continue playing the sport of their school days. The medical schools of London had rugby clubs that were among the earliest founded, with Guy's Hospital said to have the oldest rugby club in the world having been founded in 1843. With the rise of more clubs there was an expansion in the number of matches played and in 1867 the United Hospitals RFC was formed, which brought together on an invitational basis, representatives of the various London hospitals for matches against established teams, such as Cambridge University.
Read more about this topic: United Hospitals RFC
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Georges Clemenceau (18411929)
“I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)