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Happy birthday, ‘founding father’

NOVEMBER 24 marked the 219th birthday of William Webb Ellis, the alleged founding father of rugby.
It might be controversial of me to say, but I’ve always considered the whole thing about him picking up the ball in 1823 and running with it during a game of football, thus inventing rugby, a complete fallacy.
Webb Ellis never even mentions such an incident during the course of his 65-year life, mostly spent as a clergyman, and the incident is only documented more than 50 years later in 1876, four years after the death of Webb Ellis, by former Rugby School pupil Matthew Bloxham, ...

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