Manchester Rugby Club, founded in 1860 as Manchester Football Club, is one of the oldest rugby union clubs in the world. Home matches are played at Grove Park in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport.
The club has a Senior Men's section (1st XV, 2nd XV and 3rd XV), a Senior Women and Youth Girls section (Manchester Women & Girls' Academy), and also Minis, Juniors and Colts (Manchester Academy). The club's home colours are red and white narrow hooped shirts, white shorts and red and white hooped socks. Away colours are navy shirts with red piping, navy shorts and navy socks.[2] The men's 1st XV currently play in Regional 1 North West, the fifth tier of the English rugby union system. The Women's 1st XV compete in Championship North 2, in the third tier of the English rugby union system.
History
Although officially founded in 1860 as Manchester Football Club, a Manchester team actually first played in 1857, when the Gentlemen of Manchester and the Gentlemen of Liverpool came together to play a friendly game. Richard Sykes, a former Captain of Football at Rugby School set up the Manchester team and provided the ball. The game was advertised as "Rugby versus the World" and some fifty players arrived to play. There is no record of the score, however it appears that five tries were scored and so there must have been a winner.
Liverpool FC, who later merged with St Helens RUFC to form Liverpool St. Helens F.C, came into being not long afterwards. It is not known why Manchester did not also form at this date but the Liverpool and St Helens clubs' merger in 1986 left Manchester as one of the oldest rugby clubs in the world.
Manchester had very strong links with the early RFU, with two former presidents of MFC also taking the same office as President of the RFU (James MacLaren 1882-1884 and Roger Walker) 1894–1896. Other members who have been President of the RFU are J.W.H.Thorpe (1898-1900), James Milnes (1934), J.Reg.Locker (1967) and Dr.T.A.Kemp, MD, FRCP (1971).[4] The club has provided a number of international players since 1871. The club provided four England players in the world's first ever international match against Scotland in 1871 (Richard Osborne, William MacLaren, Arthur Sumner Gibson and H.J.C. Turner). Another former player was Albert Neilson Hornby, the first ever player to captain England at both rugby and cricket. The earliest international jersey is still on display in the clubhouse. Andrew Bulteel and Ernest Marriott both played for England in the last 20 a-side match against Ireland in 1875.
Manchester FC were also the first recognised association football side in Manchester. In 1894 Newton Heath (present day Manchester United) were banned from changing their name to Manchester FC by the FA and RFU because of the existence of the rugby side.[5] The full story of Manchester FC's association football history is detailed in Manchester A Football History where it is revealed they hold many Mancunian firsts. They were also the first English club side to play football competitively in Scotland when they faced Queen's Park F.C. in the second round of the FA Cup in 1883–84, losing 15–0.[6]
Manchester Rugby Club are the current holders of the unenviable record of the longest ever losing streak in club rugby.
The Cheshire based rugby union side finally laid to rest the ‘record breaking’ ghost of eighty seven consecutive league losses spanning just more than three years on 24th March 2012. This was following some poor financial decisions by the rugby management, after being promoted to National League One when the club narrowly avoided bankrupsy.
Manchester Women's Rugby
Manchester Women's Rugby was founded at Manchester Rugby Club in 1991 in the year of the first ever Women's Rugby World Cup. The club has gone from strength to strength, rising through the leagues to compete in Championship North 2 in the third tier of the RFU English Rugby Union system. The club has established a Women & Girls' Academy section, offering development and competitive rugby to U13, U15, U18 and Senior Women. Manchester Rubies and Manchester Women front the clubs' competitive squads.[7]
Liverpool St Helens Football Club is an English rugby union team formed from the merger of Liverpool Football Club and St. Helens RUFC.
Guy's, Kings and St. Thomas' Rugby Football Club ("GKT") is the name given to the modern amalgam of three formerly distinct hospital rugby clubs each with a long history, having all been founded in the nineteenth century. The teams from Guy's Hospital and St Thomas' Hospital were the first to merge following the union of their respective Medical Departments. When King's College Hospital also merged in 1999 the King's College Hospital Rugby Football Club opted to remain separate and in so doing became an open rugby club that no longer represented the Hospital Medics. GKT is notable for having been part of the twenty-one founding members of the Rugby Football Union, and across its joint history has produced many international players.
Edinburgh University Rugby Football Club is a leading rugby union side based in Edinburgh, Scotland which currently plays its fixtures in the Edinburgh Regional Shield competition and the British Universities Premiership. It is one of the eight founder members of the Scottish Rugby Union. In the years prior to the SRU's introduction of club leagues in 1973 and the advent of professionalism in the 1990s, EURFC was a major club power and it won the 'unofficial' Scottish Club championship several times. It remains a club with an all-student committee, and is only open to students of the University of Edinburgh. The club runs a men's team and a women's team; both playing in the university leagues.
A rugby union tournament was held in May 1936, three months prior to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Rugby union had been an official Olympic sport in 1900, 1908, 1920 and 1924, but was dropped from the Olympic program after the 1924 Paris Games. The 1936 tournament is not mentioned in the official report of the organising committee of the Berlin Games, and has never been given the status of an official demonstration sport for those Games.
The Marlborough Nomads was a 19th-century English rugby union club that was notable for being one of the twenty-one founding members of the Rugby Football Union. They also supplied a number of players for the sport's early international fixtures.
The Lancashire County Rugby Football Union is the society responsible for rugby union in the county of Lancashire, England, and is one of the constituent bodies of the national Rugby Football Union having been formed in 1881. In addition it is the county that has won the County Championship on most occasions
Broughton Park FC, is one of the oldest rugby union clubs in England and was established in 1882, just one year after the Lancashire County Rugby Football Union was founded and eleven years after the formation of the national Rugby Football Union. The first XV played in North 1 West, a sixth level league in the English league system following their promotion as champions of South Lancs/Cheshire 1 at the end of the 2017-18 season.
Civil Service NI Rugby Football Club is a rugby union club based in Maynard Sinclair Pavilion of Belfast, Northern Ireland. The club was formed in the autumn of 1922 by staff of the newly established Northern Ireland Civil Service. After some years of success playing at a junior level, the club was given senior status by the Ulster Branch in the 1928/29 season and celebrated by winning the senior league at its first attempt. Up until World War II, Civil Service teams enjoyed high placings in the league tables but struggled to convert good performances into trophies.
The 1980 Fiji rugby union tour of Argentina was a series of matches played between October and November by the Fiji national rugby union team in Argentina.
The 1987 Australia rugby union tour of Argentina was a series of matches played between October and November 1987 in Argentina and Paraguay by Australia. The Wallabies won seven matches of nine and lost the series of test matches against Los Pumas, led by Hugo Porta.
The Scotland national B rugby union team was one of several national rugby union teams behind the Scottish national side. It was largely used as a development side and began in the era when Scotland had little in the way of an age-grade pathway.
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