History of Rugby and the Rugby Ball

Rugby and Rugby Balls
This week in reading, the Lollipops group read a new school journal. In it they read an article called 'The First Rugby Ball'. Here are some of the facts they found. They recorded facts on a rugby ball shape and displayed on a group chart.

- Rugby school developed Rugby football from football and played this game according to Rugby rules

- Until 1870, rugby was played with a near spherical ball with an inner-tube made of a pig's bladder!

- William Webb Ellis was a schoolboy at Rugby School, who, bored with the slow pace of a football game, picked up the ball and ran with it, and created the game of rugby. Webb Ellis is the person the World Cup is named after.

- Richard Lindon started making rugby balls for Rugby School out of hand stitched four-panel, leather casings and pigs’ bladders.

- The rugby ball's distinctive shape is supposedly due to the pig’s bladder
Early balls were more plum-shaped than oval.

- The balls varied in size in the beginning depending upon how large the pig’s bladder was.