Today, every schoolboy knows the story of William Webb Ellis, the Rugby School pupil “who with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it”. The presentation trophy for the Rugby World Cup is known as the Webb Ellis trophy in his honour, and his “achievement” is honoured by a plaque at the school
The Olympic Games are a sporting occasion played every two years at international level. A number of competitions are arranged where thousands of athletes from around the world take part. The history of this great sporting competition dates back to the 5th Century AD.
Anthropologists say that man evolved out of the sea and it is certainly a fact that our prehistoric ancestors swam according to interpretations of cave drawings in Sura, Egypt. However, the earliest written references to swimming are from around 2000 BC, but people should have been bathing, swimming and fishing long before that.
The very first recorded discussion of tennis was in the fourteenth Cycle of plays called ‘The Second Shepherds? Play’ from the Wakefield Yorkshire author known simply as The Wakefield Master. In scene VIII Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur?s round table is playing tennis with a group of giants.
A lot of debate has taken place concerning the history of golf, long traditionally believed to have started in the area surrounding the Firth of Forth in Scotland. A golf-like game is recorded as taking place on 26 February 1297, in the Netherlands, where the Dutch played a game with a stick and leather ball.
While hurling is generally recognized as a Gaelic sport it should perhaps be called a Celtic one. For the history of hurling is in fact older than the history of Ireland itself. It started even before Christianity, arriving in Ireland more than three thousand years ago with the Celts.
The Ashes is the name given to a biennial series of test cricket matches played between England and Australia. The very first cricket test match was played between England and Australia in 1877, but the idea of ?playing for the Ashes? dates from some five years later after England had lost the ninth test match played between the two rivals.
The FA Cup, or Football Association Challenge Cup to give it its full title, is the oldest football competition in the world. It was started in 1871, when it was suggested that “a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the Association”.
Much has been written about the history and birth of the sport of baseball and disagreement has surrounded the subject for over a century.There has long been a legend, once extensively believed by many Americans, that baseball was made-up by one Abner Doubleday in 1839.
Although there are references to Native Americans playing ball games, modern American football has its origins in traditional ball games played in villages and schools in Europe for many centuries before America was settled by Europeans.