LONDON U FOKUSU LONDON IN FOCUS
F ootball is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans, while rugby is a hooligans’game played by gentlemen - At least that’s what lovers of rugby claim. And who would know better than the English? Their Mecca of rugby is located in Twickenham, at a stadium that has a capacity of 82,000 spec- tators and is, after Wembley, the largest in London. The home of English rugby union is actually the biggest sta- dium of its kind in the world. It’s hard to believe that this his- toric venue began life as a humble cabbage patch, but that’s exactly what it was before the Rugby Football Union (RFU) pur- chased the land for just over £5,500 in 1907. The first game was played two years later - a battle between local club sides Harle- quins and Richmond - and here we are, more then a 100 years later, still going strong. However, although we could easily conclude that, since this is a full contact sport played by strong guys who wrestle on the pitch in a rather rough game, a similar atmosphere would reign in the stands of Twickenham, nothing could be further from the truth! Rugby fans embrace while singing throughout the entire game, fans of opposing teams are not even physically separat- ed, and at the end, regardless of who wins, they all go together to the same pub for a beer! How this picture differs from what we are accustomed to see- ing at football matches in England! Heaven and earth! To find out why this is so, what the secret of rugby is and why the English are so fond of it, we asked our colleague, journalist Mark Robert Pullen, who is himself English and, what’s more, a rugby coach! - Football, of which rugby is a form, has been popular in the UK since medieval times, but the rules of the game often var- ied from place to place – with the only universalities being that two teams of men would compete to score goals on foot, as op- posed to on horseback, and with a ball (hence foot-ball). As such, when teams met to compete, the rules for that day’s com- petition would be agreed before the match. This only changed when rules were set down on paper and two forms of football became dominant: association football, aka soccer, and Rugby football – named after the school where the rules were first de- fined in the mid-1800s – says Mark, adding that it is traditional- ly suggested that the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries were
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