Long before international stadiums and professional leagues, rugby's earliest organized club wasn't founded by athletes at all - it was founded by medical students. Guy's Hospital Football Club, formed by former Rugby School pupils studying medicine in London, is widely recognized as the oldest rugby club in the world.
Here's what's actually verified about its founding, its role in creating the Rugby Football Union, and the players who carried its name into rugby's earliest internationals.
Guy's Hospital Football Club - today part of Guy's, King's and St Thomas' RFC - is widely recognized as the oldest rugby club in the world, with a founding date of 1843.
That 1843 date rests on circumstantial evidence rather than a surviving founding document: it comes largely from an 1883-84 fixture card describing the club's '40th season.'
The club was founded by former pupils of Rugby School in Warwickshire who had gone on to study medicine at Guy's Hospital in London.
Guy's Hospital itself was founded in 1721 by Thomas Guy, a bookseller and philanthropist, and became home to one of England's oldest medical schools.
The club originally played its matches on Blackheath Common in southeast London.
Blackheath Football Club, founded in 1858, is the oldest rugby club in England with surviving contemporary documentation; the two clubs later shared a clubhouse at the Princess of Wales pub from 1862.
On 26 January 1871, Guy's Hospital sent a representative, J. H. Ewart, to the London meeting where the Rugby Football Union was founded.
Guy's Hospital was one of 21 founding clubs of the Rugby Football Union (RFU), the sport's governing body in England, established in 1871.
Rugby grew out of the many different, locally-invented versions of football played at English schools in the 19th century.
According to a popular school legend, a Rugby School pupil named William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it during a football match in 1823 - but no contemporary evidence supports the story, which only appeared decades later, so historians treat it as apocryphal rather than fact.
Dr. Lennard Stokes, who trained at Guy's Hospital, captained England five times between 1875 and 1881, including in England's first-ever match against Wales, and later served as RFU president from 1886 to 1888.
Alfred St George Hamersley, a Guy's Hospital player, appeared in rugby's first international match (Scotland v England, 1871) and became England's second captain in 1874; he later helped establish rugby clubs in New Zealand and Canada.
Arthur Budd played rugby for England and went on to serve as president of the Rugby Football Union from 1888 to 1889.
Rugby union and rugby league split into separate codes in 1895; today rugby union is played 15-a-side while rugby league is played 13-a-side.
In rugby union, players can only pass the ball backward or sideways while advancing toward the opposing goal line, unlike in football/soccer.
The Rugby World Cup, rugby union's premier international tournament, was first held in 1987, co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.
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