A rugby ball that has travelled around the world to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Rugby School was passed around by youth players of AS Monaco Rugby club on Saturday.
Although Rugby School has other claims to fame – it had a very progressive headmaster in Thomas Arnold, and Tom Brown’s 1857 novel School Days was set at the Warwickshire school – it’s as the birthplace of Rugby, the sport, for which it’s best known.
However, it was not until 1823 that the game was born. A pupil, William Webb Ellis, defied the rules of soccer and “with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played at the time, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it”.
The ball that came to Monaco on April 1 has so far visited Six Nations games in Edinburgh, Cardiff, London, Paris, and Rome as well as London, Guernsey Moscow, Hong Kong, Beaune, Milan Florence.
It has also been to Menton, where William Webb Ellis is buried.
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