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William Webb Ellis created the game of rugby! He ran into the middle of a soccer gameand picked up the ball and started running with it. This is why the rugby world cup trophy is called the Webb Ellis trophy. This is the myth, anyway. In actual fact, at the time Webb Ellis was at Rugby school, soccer as a recognisable sport did not exist - like many public schools at the time, Rugby played its own "brand" of team ball sport, which changed year-on-year as new boys joined and old ones left. The offence Webb Ellis is actually meant to have committed was not holding the ball, which was allowed by the school rules at the time, but to have run with the ball after making a fair catch (or "mark"), rather than kicking it away. However, even this story was only reported years later by a man who did not witness the event himself, but instead relied on a second-hand source whose identity he refused to reveal.

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16y ago

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