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The most impressive aspect of the Lions victory over the stoic Waratahs was the manner of their five tries – all came through deft and sharp hand-passing of the ball.
It followed on from the ten tries in Newcastle, where only the last five-pointer came from an O’Driscoll grubber kick, and even that was an opportunity brought about by quick-fire hand-passes.
Unveiled by the Old Rugbeian Society in 1895, the famous bronze plaque at Rugby School pays tribute to William Webb Ellis who, in their words, “with fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time at Rugby School, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it, thus originating the distinctive feature of the Rugby game.”
However, given carrying and attempting to run away with the inflated pig’s bladder was the basis of many of the forms of folk football stretching back to Medieval times and earlier, as well as being part of Australian and Gaelic football, perhaps the credit, and indeed the innovation, is misplaced.
The truly distinctive feature of rugby football is not picking the ball up from the ground, nor is it running with it – what stands rugby apart is the hand-passing of the ball between teammates.
Passing or throwing of the ball, even handing the ball off to another, was not part of the game in Webb Ellis’ time, nor is it mentioned in Thomas Hughes’ celebrated account of a Rugby School football match in 1857’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays.
That’s not to say the early written laws of the game in the 1840s-60s banned it – they didn’t need to – the notion of tossing away the ball to another player was an affront to one’s manliness, akin to one running off in the face of danger.
While at Rugby School and England football traditions governed as forcibly as the written word, the devisors of the Melbourne FC’s rules in 1859 felt the need to add a final commandment: “The ball, while in play, may under no circumstances be thrown.”
Many have retrospectively, and wrongly, presumed this was done to rid the Australian code of a rugby trait.
Hand-passing of the ball in rugby football did not arise until after 1877’s reduction from 20-a-side teams to 15-a-side. It first began as short-passing and handing-off of the ball close-in among the forwards, led by the Blackheath FC in England.
In open field though a ball-carrier, whether a forward or a back, running with the ball would end their run with a drop kick at goal or for territory, rather than look to pass to a trailing teammate.
In 1882 at Oxford University under the captaincy of Harry Vassall, the ball was for the first time thrown from scrums to the three-quarter backs, who took advantage of the open spaces available to them.
It was quickly seen that the backs running upfield and utilising hand-passing could make tremendous gains in territory and run across the goal-line for tries.
This was the arrival of the truly distinctive feature of the rugby game.
As revealed in The First Lions of Rugby book, the 1888 British Lions brought this revolution in rugby to the playing fields of Australia and New Zealand:
“Before 1888 there were the old ways of rugby. After 1888 there were the exciting and revolutionary new ways of rugby. People would arrive before a game believing one rugby philosophy and leave two hours later mesmerised by an entirely new understanding of the possibilities. There was no going back to old ways, there was no slow evolution. The game dramatically, radically, and irrevocably changed for the better – for both the player and the spectator.”
Australian rules football had been making significant gains in NSW and Queensland as a spectator sport through the 1880s. However, the way the 1888 Lions moved the ball about the field in co-ordinated hand-passing made the code much more spectacular to watch, replacing the all-scrummaging mixed with solo runs game of the past that enthused few other than the players.
During 1888 Melbourne’s The Argus spoke against allowing passing the ball with hands and not feet, reminding its readers “the game is football, and not handball.”
Of course, Australian rules did not stick rigidly to the 1859 rule prohibiting throwing the ball, and while some will argue throwing and passing the ball are different things, both use the hands and not the feet.
From the early 1880s ‘hand balling’ (knocking the ball out of the ruck or to move the ball forward by punching it) appears in match reports, and the trait has been on a slow evolutionary path towards a ball-running and hand-passing game that today sees the kick-to-handball ratio in AFL on near equal terms.
At what ratio a code moves from being classed as ‘foot-ball’ to ‘hand-ball’ can never be answered – none of the football codes absolutely deny use of the hands in moving the ball, not even soccer.
Rugby is not handball, but when you see the inter-play, combination, switches and variety of passes (wide or close-in) shown by the Lions on Saturday night, you have to be glad rugby’s greatest innovation was not William Webb Ellis running with the ball.
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Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.