When the final of the eighth Rugby World Cup is contested on October 31 at Twickenham, the two teams will be playing for the sport’s greatest prize – the William Webb Ellis Cup.
The trophy is named after the man widely credited with inventing rugby football, but some argue that Webb Ellis was not the first to try his hand at a form of rugby, and that the sport’s origins can in fact be traced back 200 years to the Scottish Borders.
In 1815, eight years before Webb Ellis was said to have disregarded the laws of football and introduced rules that would later form the basis of rugby, the Carterhaugh Ba’ Game took place involving teams from Selkirk and Yarrow.
“It was a massive game of rugby, they reckon 1,000 people took part,” explains Ian Landles, a Borders historian. “There were very little rules and we look on that as being the start of rugby union football rather than the William Webb Ellis theory in Rugby School. We reckon rugby began here in the Scottish Borders, the heartland of the game.”
The historic match, which was organised and officiated by the 4th Duke of Buccleuch, was actually intended to be a handball game, but some of the players are thought to have started passing the ball to one another in a style we now associate with rugby, years before Webb Ellis made his name by picking up and running with the ball at Rugby School in Warwickshire.
A re-enactment involving children from the local schools will take place to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Carterhaugh Ba' Game as part of the Bill McLaren Exhibition, which is on display at Bowhill House in Selkirk from tomorrow until the end of September. Among the memorabilia collected by the “Voice of Rugby” during his 50-year commentary career are his famous “big sheets”, the extensive and detailed notes he made in preparation for matches.
“The success of his commentary was not just his turn of phrase or his knowledge of the game, but the meticulous homework and preparation that he did,” says Landles, who also serves as director of the Bill McLaren Foundation. “He was the prince of commentators and an awful lot to do with that was his preparation.”
Perhaps even the great Bill’s “big sheets” would not have been enough to cover the 1000-man Carterhaugh Ba’ Game two centuries ago.
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