Timeline of The Foundation of National Rugby Unions
The first national rugby union was the Rugby Football Union, founded in England in 1871. This was followed over the next decade by the Scottish Football Union (1873, later SRU), Irish Rugby Football Union (1879) and Welsh Rugby Union (1881). In Australia, the Southern Rugby Union (later the New South Wales Rugby Union) and the Northern Rugby Union (later the Queensland Rugby Union) were formed in 1874 and 1883 respectively, before eventually helping form the Australian Rugby Union in 1949. Both South Africa and New Zealand formed their Unions before the end of the 19th century. The white South African Rugby Board merged with the non-racial South African Rugby Union in 1992 following the fall of apartheid. The other major rugby power, France, formed the French Rugby Federation in 1919.
Other notable foundations are Argentina (1899), Fiji (1913), Tonga (1923), Samoa (1923), Japan (1926), Italy (1928), the Rugby Union of the Soviet Union (1936), Hong Kong (1953) Canada (1965) and USA (1975).
Some of the pre-1925 foundations may be more surprising to those who speak of "traditional rugby playing nations": Rhodesia/Zimbabwe (1895), Germany (1900), Ceylon/Sri Lanka (1908), Morocco (1916), Malaya/Malaysia (1921), Catalonia (1922, later disbanded by Francisco Franco), Spain (1923) and Kenya (1923)
Many minor governing bodies have been set up in recent years, with the most recent being Jordan (2007), Ecuador (2008), Turkey (2009) and the United Arab Emirates (2010).
Read more about this topic: History Of Rugby Union
Famous quotes containing the words foundation, national and/or unions:
“The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If the national security is involved, anything goes. There are no rules. There are people so lacking in roots about what is proper and what is improper that they don’t know there’s anything wrong in breaking into the headquarters of the opposition party.”
—Helen Gahagan Douglas (1900–1980)
“The newly-formed clothing unions are ready to welcome her; but woman shrinks back from organization, Heaven knows why! It is perhaps because in organization one find the truest freedom, and woman has been a slave too long to know what freedom means.”
—Katharine Pearson Woods (1853–1923)