With the Heineken Cup final on next Saturday it seems appropriate we should consider the word "rugby" this week.

The game is named after a public school in Rugby, a town east of Coventry in England's Warwickshire. Creation of the game is accredited to William Webb Ellis, later a Church of England clergyman, who while a pupil at Rugby school (founded in 1567) in the latter part of 1823 supposedly caught the ball during a football match and ran with it.

And you just did not do that!

Up to then football as played at Rugby School allowed handling of the ball, but no-one was allowed to run with it in their hands towards the opposition's goal. In those times too there was no fixed limit to the number of players on each side and sometimes hundreds took part.

The town itself was originally a small Anglo-Saxon settlement known as “Rocheberie”, mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and said to mean “fortified place of a man called Hroca”.

A second element to the name, added in the 13th century from the Old Norse is “-by”, meaning “village”. But for that, the town would probably be known as Rockbury today. Fancy a game of rockbury then?

The Rugby Football Union was founded in London in 1871 with a strong emphasis on the game remaining amateur. It split on this issue in 1895, which is ironic as rugby union itself went professional a century later in 1995.

Over those 100 years other differences evolved. The union game, for instance, has 15 players to the League’s 13 (no flankers). Rather than a ruck, League has “play the ball” (heeling the ball back after a tackle). League awards just two points for a goal.

What you may not know but have long suspected is that American football is a descendant of rugby. In 1876, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia universities formed the Intercollegiate Football Association, based on the rules of rugby American football evolved from those intercollegiate games

Ireland has remained a predominantly rugby union island with two unions founded in 1874. The Irish Football Union had jurisdiction over clubs in Leinster, Munster and parts of Ulster while the Northern Football Union of Ireland controlled the Belfast area. Both came together as the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) in 1879 and branches were formed in Leinster, Munster and Ulster. The Connacht Branch was formed in 1886.

inaword@irishtimes.com