Rugby football

The two variants of gridiron football — Canadian football and, to a lesser extent, American football — were once considered forms of rugby football but are seldom now referred to as such. In fact, the governing body of Canadian football, Football Canada, was known as the Canadian Rugby Union as late as 1967, more than fifty years after the sport parted ways with the established rules of rugby union or league.

Rugby football was thought to have been started about 1845 at Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, England although forms of football in which the ball was carried and tossed date to medieval times (see medieval football). Rugby football would spread across to other English public schools during the 19th century. As a consequence, Rugby football gained popularity all over the British Empire as former pupils of the public schools continued to play Rugby football even after their graduations. Rugby football split into two sports/codes in 1895, when twenty-one clubs split from the Rugby Football Union to form the Northern Rugby Football Union (later renamed the Rugby Football League in 1922) in the George Hotel, Huddersfield, over payments to players who took time off from work to play the sport (known as "broken-time payments"), thus making rugby league the first code to turn professional and pay players. Rugby union turned professional one hundred years later in 1995, following the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa. The respective world governing bodies are World Rugby (rugby union) and the Rugby League International Federation (rugby league).