(LIGHTS CLATTER) (TENSE MUSIC) Plan A ` get some big guys, run hard. Plan B ` get some big guys and run hard. (BELL CHIMES) Plan C ` get some big guys and run hard. To me, rugby is Genesis. It was the first real big, messy, competitive, aggressive team sport. There's no hiding. You can hurt people. You are exposed. The thing that birthed all of these codes all over the world, and gave the United States its most popular sport. In this series, we will reveal how rugby's present was born from a remarkable past. A game that started life as a hobby for English elites, became an expression of colonisation, an emblem of national identity, a challenge to class and gender. The game is full of women sticking two fingers up to people who think that women shouldn't play rugby. A symbol of oppression,... We should try and keep sport out of politics. Sport is part of politics. ...and one of unity. (LAUGHS) I'm getting teary-eyed just thinking about it. In these six episodes, we will bring together rugby's diverse and colourful landscapes. (BOY YELLS) (CROWD ROARS) We will meet the icons of the sport, cultural commentators, and the keepers of rugby's history. (DRAMATIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC) This is The Story Of Rugby. (TENSE PERCUSSIVE MUSIC) (MUSIC SWELLS) (MUSIC STOPS) (CONTEMPLATIVE THEME MUSIC) Captions by Cameron Grigg. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2019 (CROWD ROARS) VARIOUS VOICES ECHO: William Webb Ellis. 1823 ` Rugby School. A 16-year-old, William Webb Ellis, charged out into the middle of this game of football and caught the bouncing ball and ran with it. Backs the length and breadth of this world would tell you that was the moment when rugby football was born. Um, I mean, yeah, I believe in it, just like you believe in Santa Claus, right? Well, he picked up the ball, didn't he? I mean, it's obvious ` it all started there. Did William Webb Ellis come to Rugby School? Yes. There is no doubt in that. Did he take the ball in his arms and run with it? I don't think it matters. I believe it, because I believe in magic, and I believe in history, and I believe in fairy tales. Fact. (LAUGHS) I can't ever give credence to the theory. Fiction is better. The ultimate fake news story, really, isn't he? In terms of rugby. But what a great legend. We like to make history easy, so that we can just take it in one bite. The history of it, the legend of it, these great mythical characters. I hear stories about me. Man, I wish that was true. It is a nice story. (CROWD CLAMOURS) I read it when I was younger, and I believed everything I read. True. Without question. I'd like to think that, from those humble beginnings, this big game started. It kinda feels like it's how rugby should have started, and it really brings to life rugby, you know? It almost goes from being unstructured to being structured, with rules, and people going against conventional way of life. I kinda like that. William Webb Ellis is both a myth and a reality. (TRAFFIC NOISES SWELL) There is one thing common to every human on the planet ` we are hardwired to compete. The brain really has, kind of, three things, right? Three elements going on. It has instinct, it has emotion, and it has rational. There's no question in my mind that the instinct of primeval man, which was 'hunt, kill and eat and compete', because if you don't compete, you didn't get to hunt, kill or eat. You died. It's basic instinct, right? It's instinct. Instinct. Pure, raw instinct. We all want to be challenged to see how good we are. Even before Homo sapiens arrived, I guess, in the animal species, the big ones wanted to eat the little ones. You're always looking for tribes. You know, some sort of following, some sort of community. And it took just one simple object to unite people everywhere. The invention of the ball in human history ranks alongside the invention of the wheel as one of the most important milestones in the development of human civilisation. (THUNDER CRACKS) 1000 years ago, everyday life for most people in England was difficult, but familiar. In medieval times, life cycles were based around agricultural seasons. But everyone loves a good party. Every year, throughout the country, on Shrove Tuesday, entire villages would let their hair down with a vengeance, and the help of a pig's bladder. Mob football is the name that's given to a game played with a ball played all over Europe during medieval times. This is a game for local people. (CROWD CHEERS) (CHEERING DROWNS OUT SPEECH) # Should Old Acquaintance # be forgot... # The thing that binds all these different iterations of the game is that they have massive teams. Often, it's a village against a village. And the idea is to get the ball into your bit. (CROWD YELLS, CLAMOURS) This is one of the ancient games that hundreds of people turn up to play. Pass it here! Pass it here! Hold him! ALL: Heave! There's a few broken legs every year, and a few hangovers the next day. There's always a headline in the local paper ` 'Stop this before someone's killed.' (LAUGHS) (MOB YELL INDISTINCTLY) These games had different names all over Europe. In France, I believe it was called 'Soule'. There is history within Scotland. There, it's called the Ba game, which is played up in Orkney, and also, the Ba games down in the borders. In Wales, we would claim a game called Cnapan, which goes back to the medieval times, which is basically a kind of murderball played between rival villages for days on end. (MOB CLAMOURS) Very few rules, apart from 'no murdering and manslaughtering.' I think that's partly because, now and again, people did die. In 1260, a man is killed in a game in Northumberland, running on to an opponent's dagger. (MOB YELLS INDISTINCTLY) There are constant laws ` kings trying to stop people from playing these games, because they cause damage to property, they cause damage to people, they make a lot of noise. Kings and the aristocracy think the working classes should be practising archery, and not playing football. Throughout this period, it's really a kind of working class disobedience. But also, there is kicking, running with the ball, wanting to get the ball into a particular bit of your part of the town, and also, a lot of violence and fighting ` something that I think will later become, essentially, the scrum. By the 16th century, the most sophisticated version of any game with a ball was in Italy. Each June 24th, on the feast of St John the Baptist, an afternoon in Florence's main piazza was the hottest ticket in town. Il calcio was open only to those of nobility, fortune, or unblemished character. Involving 27 players per team, calcio used a ball similar in weight, shape and size to a present-day rugby ball. There were expected standards of behaviour for all to observe. When you go out on a field, yes, it's about you as a player, but it's also about you as a person. (CROWD CHEERS) (INDISTINCT LOUDSPEAKER CHATTER) (APPLAUSE) (WHISTLE TRILLS) In calcio, also known as Tuscan Fever, the rudimentary elements of modern sport were formed. Players and fans congregated in a stadium. There were rules to obey. Physicality was integral to the contest. There was a winner and a loser. (DRAMATIC MUSIC) (WHISTLE TRILLS) You have to get yourself into a state of mind to be prepared for proper war. Obviously within the laws of the game, but it's a battle out there. (CROWD YELLS, CHEERS) (CHEERING INTENSIFIES) (WHISTLE TRILLS) (CROWD ROARS) (LOUDSPEAKER ANNOUNCES IN ITALIAN) You've gotta adhere to the team values and standards, and those values and standards are the sort of things that you want all young men to have in life, you know? While simple games have been played for thousands of years, complex sports are a very modern concept, and for a very good reason. In human history, most people could not afford to stop working and indulge in something as frivolous as playing or watching sport. They were too busy staying alive. What you can say about 18th-century pre-industrial Britain is that, by far and away, most people work on the land. People who are 90% engaged in agriculture. Basically, a quiet country life. Probably, a life of quiet desperation, really. For the 1% who rule the other 99%, 'sport' was another word for 'vice'. Though the new game of cricket was an honourable exception, sport for the idle rich meant horse racing, boxing, or cards ` activities which allowed them to gamble on the outcome. Sport wasn't something a gentleman actually played. Well, you had working class, you had middle class ` you can go lower-middle class, middle class, upper-middle class ` and then the tops. The way that the class system works in 18th-century pre-industrial Britain is that, right at the top, you have the aristocracy, and the aristocracy are quite a small group. They are rich men with titles, who own lots and lots and lots of land, and they feel that they are entitled to rule. One of the fruits of making more money is that you can send your children off to get a good education. In the 18th century, the seven ancient medieval schools, including Eton, Harrow and Rugby, were famous for educating the sons of the ruling class. Public schools, of course, are private schools. That's an English way of putting things. (LAUGHS) At a handful of elite schools, the playing of organised games developed. At each school, smaller but no less boisterous versions of mob football were played within school boundaries, using customised rules devised by the pupils. A school's layout heavily influenced the style of game played. At Eton, this involved a wall. (BOYS GRUNT, YELL INDISTINCTLY) At Winston Churchill's Harrow, the rolling fields allowed a quasi-hybrid version of modern-day rugby and soccer. The people who went to Eton, to Harrow, to Rugby School ` these were the people who would end up as Prime Ministers, or as, uh, the Governor-Generals of the colonies. They would lead the army, they would lead the Civil Service. With their shared origins in mob football, school games involved the use of hands. But a growing number of players preferred to kick the ball. Throttling, tripping and hacking another schoolboy to gain control of the ball were all permissible. (REFLECTIVE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC) If you get permission, you can actually watch them play these games, which are almost like fossilised remains of a past era of football that doesn't exist any more. (MUD SPLASHING) These schools were the elites. The guys from these school would have gone on to rule the empire, at that time, in the 19th century. For centuries, the sacred seven schools force-fed their pupils the same diet of Latin, Greek and the classics. However, like the traditional games they played, English schools were about to undergo a transformation so profound, nothing would ever be the same again. * (WIND WHISTLES) Some dates alter the entire course of human history. One such date in the 18th century started a revolution that laid the foundation for our modern world. The fourth of May, 1776. That was a hugely important day which changed everything. (MACHINERY WHIRRS, BUZZES) John Wilkinson made, or James Watt, the first precise cylinder that enabled the first fully-working steam engine, which then led to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was as important for 19th-century society as the Digital Revolution is for the 21st. Machines were developed which made even more machines, and some very smart people extremely rich. Manufacturing was the Internet of its day. Overnight, centuries of everybody living the same way disappeared. The economy moved from being an agricultural, rural economy to being an industrial, factory-based economy in towns. In the cities, there are new, better-paid jobs. They offer big opportunities for work, because they're growing and growing. So that sort of social change was sweeping across Britain in the latter part of the 18th century. Great wealth was being made. Unprecedented wealth created an entrepreneurial new breed, which formed a powerful new class ` the middle class. Houses, transport, communications, food, sanitation. Everything got better for some. But not everyone shared in this new prosperity. There was no time to play sports. Nobody working in a coal mine is gonna come over and say, 'Hey, let's have basketball practice', or, you know, 'I think I'll run the marathon through the coal fields.' You're not gonna do that. There was one corner of society the Industrial Revolution bypassed completely ` the education of England's elite ` a system mired in the past. These schools ` they're pretty damn rough places. We're going to toss you until we kill you. Boys being roasted over fires, and there was the whole business of fagging. You lazy little swine! You're breaking my arm! That's right, Harker! I had a fag at school, and he was bound to do my bidding. He cleaned my shoes and brought me tea in the morning, as what one did in those days. So I was caned at school, and when I became a prefect, I caned people ` not with a stick, but with a shoe. (ALL CHANT MELODICALLY) Many of them really went there for five or six years of non-stop fighting and learned very little. Bullying, physical violence was rife amongst pupils. Brown! That changed in 1828, when the Steve Jobs of 19th century education was appointed headmaster of Rugby School in Warwickshire. The mastermind behind this break with cruelty was Thomas Arnold. We shall not only restore the good name of Rugby School, but we shall make it the finest public school in all England! This very smart headmaster looks at sport, thinks 'I can use sport as a way of teaching moral character', and it's a completely revolutionary idea. Arnold was not just Rugby's greatest headmaster, but actually, Arnold transformed the face of education not just at Rugby, but in the world. Of course, the other great advantage to getting boys to spend large amounts of time playing sport is that it completely exhausted them, and that dealt with one of the other kind of great preoccupations, which was that they wanted to stop their pupils from thinking or doing anything about sex. (GRAND CHORAL MUSIC) This idea of sport as a moral project, and the whole range of characteristics that are taught by playing sport is given a brand name. It's a great name. It's called 'Muscular Christianity'. It's such a great name, because it suggests strength, it suggests health and fitness, and there's religion in there too, so it's obviously good. (CHORAL MUSIC CONTINUES) To people like Thomas Arnold, who saw himself as an educational reformer, team sports became very important. (MUSIC ENDS) The code of football played at Rugby School was unique. (CROWDS YELL INDISTINCTLY) Like mob football, Rugby School's version was a contest for possession. Like calcio, it took place in an arena with goals and spectators. Like Harrow, Rugby's game was contested by two teams of equal size. (TENSE MUSICAL SWELL) At Rugby, once a team gained possession, the primary goal was running with the ball, passing the ball, evading defenders, in order to touch the ball down behind a marked line to score a try. (CROWD CHEERS) (CROWD YELLS INDISTINCTLY) (DRAMATIC ELECTRONIC MUSIC) (MUSIC SWELLS) (PLAYERS YELL) Traditionally, the school football played at Rugby evolved from the input of generations of boys who found new ways to improve it. On the 28th of August, 1845, three pupils at the school published the first ever book of rugby's rules. One of the boys was Thomas Arnold's son. Of William Webb Ellis, there was no mention whatsoever. In the 1850s, this idea ` Muscular Christianity ` and the game of rugby get this unbelievable PR boost when an ex-pupil, Tom Hughes, writes an actually really boring and preachy book, which nevertheless becomes a tremendous bestseller called Tom Brown's School Days. He began writing Tom Brown's School Days for his son, because he intended his son to go to Rugby School, and he wanted to give his son a sense of what his experiences would be like. It was quite literally the Harry Potter of its day. (TINKLING PIANO MUSIC) Young boy who goes away to school, who is revealed to be much more important than what he initially thought. His friendships, his battles against bullies. At the heart of Tom Brown's School Days is the game that they played at Rugby. You can see a straight line all the way through to Hogwarts. You know, it becomes a bestselling genre. But the other thing it does is it completely smashes the idea of rugby football and Rugby as a school. It sort of sends it out into the world. * The city in which Tom Brown's School Days landed was like no other on the planet. Twice the size of Paris, 19th-century London was simply extraordinary in its ambition, modernity and power. 40% of the world's trade passed through London docks. London has become a city state, and it's London and everywhere else. London's another country. It's a completely` it's another country with another economy, which led to the Empire, eventually, because to have an empire, you have to have powerful economics. London was all about the new ` flushing toilets, safety machines, electricity, X-rays, even Jelly Babies were some of its novel inventions, and in 1851, London showed the world just how great it was. The great exhibition of 1851 is the first of what will internationally come to be known as The World Fair. One shilling, you and your family can go to this glittering Crystal Palace. It was a cathedral to the brilliance of Britain in the world. People from all over the world came to exhibit their wares. But it was mainly a demonstration of the might ` the industrial might, the technological might, the scientific might ` of Britain. The new middle class was the biggest beneficiary. After putting the Great into Britain, they kicked off their heels and got down to the serious business of pleasure. Gentleman's clubs flourished. There's a sort of tradition in Britain that goes back to the 17th century of places for men to go, and it sort of starts with the coffee houses. So that's the sort of beginning of the idea of a club, and then, the aristocracy developed these gaming clubs, where they'd go to play cards and to gamble and talk about things like sport and games. It wasn't all talk. The working class ` the people who made the rest rich ` worked six long days a week, with just Sundays off for church. The newly-minted professional middle class did whatever they liked. A favourite pastime was physical exercise. The age of sport had arrived. And after a while, people would aggregate Saturday on to Sunday to make this new phenomenon of the weekend. The idea of having sports ` publically accessible sports functions, to which you would go to watch ` that slowly, in the middle of the 19th century, began to be a phenomenon. When the phenomenon called sport connected with the phenomenon called Tom Brown's School Days, the result was inevitable. As this new concept of sport took hold, former public schoolboys found a new way to continue playing rugby. Once a young man leaves a school, they want to keep their connections going. So the clubs become places where the friendships formed can continue. In London, from Mondays to Fridays, the aspiring future leaders of the Empire would earn a handsome living, but come the weekend, it was time for some good old rugby. And they would set up private clubs. They would then buy a field, put up the posts, and have a linesman to mark out the pitch and so forth, and then, they would play these games in this new environment of club land. On Saturdays, young men would play Rugby school's version of football. Rugby is a spectacle. It's got what you might call a gentlemanly code ` often breached, but preached in any case. A host of voluntary amateur organisations with names like Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins self-organised games against each other in London's fields. In club rugby games, the only thing at stake was bragging rights. Camaraderie, fitness and having fun were the reasons to play. I think it's a way to allow people who have privilege or are intelligent or have education to express aggressive impulses. Rugby's popularity was not confined to London. The desire to play against clubs from different areas grew increasingly appealing. The other thing, of course, that is making it possible for one team to travel to the other side of the country are trains! Trains basically revolutionised transport. I mean, it's astonishing. It means that teams can go and play other teams, and they can play the same game, because it's written down and codified, and published. And it was revolutionary. Transport means that you can bring spectators to watch the game. The explosive growth of railways connected Englishmen like never before in business, trade, entertainment, and sport. The consequences for rugby would be disastrous. The geological make-up of Britain is very different ` North and South. There is this big diagonal, which is a big green belt, if you like, stretching from Dorset to Yorkshire. So, yes. The North/South split is historically and geologically significant, and rather like the class system. It survives, and will survive for a long time. As you leave London, you get into the countryside and see these vast expanses. You felt it. You felt the difference between the heart from the North and more of the softness from the South. England was more than just London, and it was a very culturally different country. This is where the factories were. Rows and rows of red brick buildings that are kind of the homes of the Industrial Revolution. This is where people made things. There's no doubt the North does feel that the South kinda gets it a bit easy. There's still a north/south divide in England. Forget sport, just look at London vis-a-vis the rest. Manchester, in many ways, was the embodiment of the Industrial Revolution. It grew very quickly from essentially being a village in the 18th century to being a massive town with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants by the 1850s. It led to huge, huge poverty and deprivation. It's industry. It's dock land. It's coal mines. It's lower class. It really wasn't until I began going around the country playing rugby that I realised how dramatic the class differentials were. Everybody hates the middle class. The working class hate the middle class because you've escaped, and the upper class hates you because you're encroaching upon them. The most important thing about the English class system is that it's present all the time. You're constantly reminded of it. You were defined by how you spoke. So, if you spoke with a Stoke accent or a Manchester accent or whatever, then they'd think you're a bit dim. Well, I'm a Northerner. You probably don't define yourself as a Southerner. So that tells you something about how we feel about it. You'll see the embodiment of the no-nonsense, straightforward Northern industrialist. They provided the backbone for the sense of Northern separateness from the South of England. Northern rugby was a very different proposition from the South in the late 1800s. The hard life created hard men, and harder rugby. A new social class entered the game in large numbers. In the north, workers start playing these games because of the way that the teams develop. They tend to represent a locality, or a factory, or a pub in a particular area. But right across the North of England, you've got just, literally, dozens of professional sporting organisations with, you know, rich history, and most of them are still a really fundamental part of the community. You're still numbing sensitive teeth? It's the way. There's a better way. Colgate Sensitive Pro-Relief actually helps repair the openings to exposed nerves. That's, uh...that's... A better way. (GROANS) Ohh! VOICEOVER: Colgate Sensitive Pro-Relief. * England's other winter game, soccer, had a much stronger following in the North than the South. Stoke-On-Trent is a working-class town. There must have been ten collieries around here, ten mines in this area. My dad worked in them, and his father worked in them, and that's how it was. It was a tough generation, and it was a tough industry. There was a kind of great solidarity between them, and it was very powerful. Stoke City is the oldest club in English football, which we're proud of, and it's no mean achievement to be alive and well all those 120-odd years later. (CROWD AMBIANCE) Rugby ` it was a game where you didn't have to be a good athlete to play. You didn't need a high skill level. Anybody could play the game, whereas football demanded high skill. COMMENTATOR: ...picked up, and there is the opening goal! (CROWD ROARS) The great thing about football ` it didn't matter what school you went to, doesn't matter how rich your dad was. You can either play or you can't. In 1871, soccer introduced a new form of competition that completely changed the dynamics for rugby ` the FA Cup. (CROWD CHATTERS) NEWSREADER: Cup final day, and the fans from Sheffield are on their way in search of that cup. A picture of fervour, excitement, almost hysteria. We're talking about, really, the start of football, aren't we? Where it started to be played, and then, it started to get organised. The FA Cup, as a boy, was the biggest thing. The core appeal of the FA Cup now is the core appeal that it had when it started. Clubs wanted to win it. And to get the best players, you had to give players a little bit extra than just simply the joy of playing the game. From the income generated by enormous crowds, within a decade, soccer turned professional. Unlike rugby, soccer players would now be paid to play. The legalisation of professionalism by the Football Association had a huge knock-on effect. It just grew exponentially, and that meant that soccer became a juggernaut, and it blew rugby out of the water. (DRAMATIC ELECTRONIC MUSIC) This was seen as a terrible portent for the future by the leaders of the RFU. This demonstrated what happened when you allowed working-class players to dominate the game. (DESOLATE GUITAR CHORD) In Northern rugby, players felt the pride in representing their community. Victory, not participation, was what mattered most. (DRAMATIC ROCK MUSIC) A series of team who all play each other, and it enormously builds the drama and excitement into the game, and with the teams come spectators who want their team to win. The difference is they're a lot more grounded, down-to-earth. Tougher environment than the South of England. They don't earn as much money, and I think that's why you get players from the North of England who have got a little bit more grit about them, and it's all about the environment that they come from. The other thing that was going on was that there was a growth of civic pride. Most of their civic architecture was built in the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s. It symbolised the importance and the significance of their towns. So that had a knock-on effect. For those young men who were keen on rugby and had formed their own rugby clubs in Manchester, in Leeds, or wherever, it became part of that civic pride. In a social first, working-class players were in direct physical opposition to their middle-class bosses. Like putting out fire with gasoline. (WHISTLE TRILLS) Those middle-class players feel that there's something fundamentally uneasy making about getting into a scrum ` such an intimate position ` with working-class players. These two classes would barely rub shoulders with each other, let alone physically grasp each other and knock to the ground. The idea that a miner or a textile mill worker could grab hold of them, pummel them into the ground and steal the ball off them, and humiliate them in many ways, was utterly unacceptable. In William Wollen's famous painting, The Rugby Match, between Yorkshire and Lancashire in 1893, we see Northern rugby at its peak. A large crowd watching the best players in England. Rugby on the big stage. But discontent was brewing. VOICEOVER: Hey, Auckland, which of the Youi 40 ways to save would work best for where you live? Grey Lynn, close to the city, is where Ava lives, so number 1 of 40 - "Don't drive to work" - could be best for her. Do a car insurance quote at youi.co.nz. * In the 1890s, the issue of whether to allow even mild forms of soccer-style professionalism into rugby grew more vexed. The London-based RFU drew the line at any form of compensation for players ` a stance increasingly opposed by the Northern clubs. Stunning day for rugby. I mean, we want to win. You know, it's our 175th game. We're not here just to fanny around. We, you know, have still got to make the hits, carry hard... For players in a team like Guy's Hospital, the oldest rugby club in the world, compensation for time off work for a hobby was never an issue. Rugby, in keeping itself in that amateur mode, was sort of aligning itself with these ideals of 'You're doing it for the love of the game. It would be sullied if you made money from it.' The Southern teams tend to peopled by middle-class players ` teachers, solicitors, groups of friends, or groups of people who've come out of a certain school. It sort of reinforced the class structure that you couldn't make a living from this, so you had to be independently wealthy or treat this as a hobby. That's the amateurs, obviously ` People who are rich enough to be able to take time off to play. The professionals are working-class men who cannot afford to take time off in order to play the game. So you get this tremendous split between the middle-class players and the working-class players. The RFU would not budge an inch on amateurism. (SCATTERED APPLAUSE) (INDISTINCT CHATTER) Cos what they really fear, I think, is the idea that, actually, so many working-class players are going to compete in the game that they are going to be swept aside. People in the South of England didn't really understand the issues that the players in the North were facing. In the North of England, they missed a shift. They didn't get paid. Under the table payments in rugby in the North of England increasingly grew more and more blatant. The RFU was livid. The Rugby Football Union decide that they are going to do everything they can to stop the game going professional. Any club that was suspected of professionalism would immediately be suspended until they could prove that they were innocent. The RFU ups the ante. Not only individual players, but entire clubs would be expelled with a lifetime ban if even suspected of being professional. The North had heard enough. On the 27th of August, 1895, 22 Northern clubs broke with the RFU to form their own organisation which would openly pay players. The RFU was delighted to see the back of them. It's really extraordinary. They basically, sort of, lop off two of their limbs, and in one go, The Southern Rugby Football Union says 'You're out.' They'd rather get rid of those working-class players and, in fact, weaken the game than let those working-class players swamp the game. The leaders of rugby union could navigate their game back to where they always wanted it to be ` about socialising amongst young men of the middle classes. Rugby union was split, and it would shape its future until the present day. Of rugby's alleged founder, William Webb Ellis, little is known. After joining the church, Webb Ellis lived in the South of France, where he died in 1872. He was 65 years old, and completely unrecognised in his lifetime. His grave was found by chance in 1958, and is now a pilgrimage for rugby fans from all over the world. As to whether he really did pick up a ball one day in 1823... We can guarantee you that, outside the window behind me, that's where rugby football started. Don't think you can say that about any other sport. And guess what? We still love William Webb Ellis, because he's a hero, he's a town hero, and he's a foundationer, and he's not what you would expect. (SWEEPING ORCHESTRAL MUSIC) Even before his death, the game credited to William Webb Ellis had changed beyond recognition. Britain's Empire had also grown to be the largest ever seen, with an influence like never before, exporting its culture and sports, like rugby, to impact upon nations and millions of people right across the globe. (DRAMATIC MUSIC SWELLS) Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2019