Obsolete Olympics #6: Rugby Union Traditional Cache

Obsolete Olympics #6: Rugby Union

This series of geocaches honors the summer olympics events which had a limited showing and are no longer a part of the program. There will be medals given out for each cache in the series, and the team with the highest medal count will be the overall winner for the series. All rules of the International Geocaching Olympic Committee apply and will be enforced.

Rugby union has been a men's medal sport at the modern Summer Olympic Games, being played at four of the first seven competitions. The sport debuted at the 1900 Paris games where the gold medal was won by the host nation. It was subsequently featured at the London games in 1908, the Antwerp games in 1920 and the Paris games in 1924. The United States is the most successful nation in Olympic rugby tournaments, having won the gold medal in both 1920 and 1924; France has the most medals, one gold (in 1900) and two silvers (in 1920 and 1924).

Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century.^[2] One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. It is played with an oval-shaped ball with a maximum width and length of 30 centimetres (12 in) and 62 centimetres (24 in) respectively. It is played on a field up to 100 metres (330 ft) long and 70 metres (230 ft) wide with H-shaped goal posts on each goal line.

William Webb Ellis is often credited with the invention of running with the ball in hand in 1823 at Rugby School when he allegedly caught the ball while playing football and ran towards the opposition goal. However, the evidence for the story is doubtful. In 1845, the first football laws were written by Rugby School pupils; other significant events in the early development of rugby include the Blackheath Club's decision to leave the Football Association in 1863 and the split between rugby union and rugby league in 1895. Historically an amateur sport, in 1995 the International Rugby Board (IRB) removed restrictions on payments to players, making the game openly professional at the highest level for the first time.