Historical textbooks trace the birth of rugby back to one defining moment in 1823, when young Englishman William Webb Ellis “with fine disregard for the rules of football caught the ball and ran forward”.

However, Samoans have their own version of where rugby originated from as written by Simi Tate (1988) in The Origins of Rugby. 

The game now referred to as rugby was invented by Samoans, using the oval-shaped dry coconut as a “ball”. 

Apparently, due to the abundance of dry coconuts in the Pacific and the high inter-migration of these keen canoeists the game of rugby easily spread to the other islands and quickly became popular.

The game was then known as lakapi from which the English word “rugby” was obviously derived (this makes “rugby” one of the only four English words known to be derived from the Polynesian tongue.  The other three are “tattoo” from the word “tatau”, “taboo” from the work “tapu” and “mana” a mystical quality in a person – but I digress). 

<< Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>