Portal:Rugby union/Did you know/Archives

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Did you know...

... that the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines team is named after a rare type of parrot?

... that the 1924 Olympic rugby final between the United States and France at Stade Colombes was marred by rioting, which may have caused the sport to have been withdrawn from the Olympics?

... that Swiss composer Arthur Honegger (10 March 1892 –27 November 1955) wrote a symphonic poem entitled Rugby in 1928?

... that Harlequin F.C. player Douglas Bader later became a WWII flying ace in the RAF despite having parts of both legs removed?

...that George Smith has twice won the John Eales Medal, awarded for the best "Wallaby", as voted for by his peers in the Rugby Union Players Association?

... that rugby union in Swaziland has the highest player to population ratio of any African nation, including South Africa?

... that Tollywood director S. S. Rajamouli's third film Sye is about rugby in a Hyderabad college?

... that All Black Ben Couch was the second Māori MP (after Sir James Carroll) to win a general (i.e. non Māori) seat?

... that Ireland's Thomas Gisborne Gordon is the only one-handed person to play international rugby of either code?

... that the French victory at the 2010 European Under-18 Rugby Union Championship was the team's fifth title in seven editions of the annual tournament?

... that Danny Crates who has carried the Olympic Torch in London and Beijing, and is the Paralympic Games world record holder in 800m sprinting, also plays competitive rugby?

... Dublin University Football Club, Trinity's Rugby Union club, established in 1854, has a strong claim to be the world's oldest football club?

... that Norrie Rowan discovered the Edinburgh Vaults, and used them to help Romanian rugby player Christian Raducanu escape his country's secret police?

... that American sports writer Lisa Olson was the

first-ever female sports columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, where she covered rugby union, Aussie Rules, cricket and rugby league?

... that Frank Stoker is the only rugby international to have won Wimbledon, and that his Irish colleague, James Cecil Parke also won the Davis Cup (as well as being an Olympic medallist?

... that Willem Ferdinand van Rheede van Oudtschoorn Bergh may hold the record for the longest name in international rugby?

... that Richard Burton's rugby skills were praised by Bleddyn Williams and he said that "I would rather have played for Wales at Cardiff Arms Park than Hamlet at Old Vic"?

... that Haitian rugby player Constantin Henriquez de Zubiera was the first athlete of African origins to win an Olympic Gold?

... that the Roan Antelope Club in Luanshya, Zambia used to hold the record for highest rugby goalposts in the world?

... that Argentina's President Juárez Celman had 2,500 rugby spectators and both teams arrested at a match in Buenos Aires in 1890?

... that lelo burti may account for rugby's popularity in Georgia?

... that Jeff Butterfield's purchase of a pine forest helped rugby union in the Cayman Islands?

... that the British Columbia Rugby Hall of Fame currently has 21 inductees, including Gareth Rees and Mark Wyatt?
... that South Africa players Jacky Morkel and Tommy Thompson are both buried in Dar es Salaam?

... that London Scottish player Ronald Simson was the first rugby internationalist of any nationality to die during World War I?

... that rugby internationalist Tremayne Rodd was the team leader for Vladimir Kramnik in London when he won the World Chess Championship from Garry Kasparov, and was a backgammon internationalist too?

... that in the late nineteenth century Swedish Football was an indigenous code of football based partly on rugby?

...that Netherlands team at the Hong Kong Sevens in 1989 contained no less than four brothers?

...that Hugh McLeod's description of Frans ten Bos as a "big lump o' potted meat" helped Scotland win against France in 1963?

...that David Rollo always played with his socks down?

...that Blair Swannell was killed in the Landing at Anzac Cove, during the first day of the Gallipoli Campaign?

... that Ireland rugby player James Magee is mentioned in James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and that Bethal Solomons's father is mentioned in his Finnegans Wake?

... that Mariusz Pudzianowski, has won more World's Strongest Man titles than any other strongman competitor, is a keen rugby player and plays for the Polish amateur team Blachy Pruszyński Budowlani Lodz?

... that Eric Liddell, of Chariots of Fire fame, also played in seven out of eight Five Nations matches in 1922 and 1923 for Scotland?

... that rugby balls were an integral part of mercenary Mike Hoare's plot to overthrow the government of the Seychelles in 1978?

... that rugby tens was invented in Malaysia?

... that the funeral of Arthur Gould in 1919 was the largest in Wales until that of Lloyd George over thirty years later?

... that Shiggy Konno, a major figure in Japanese rugby, trained to be a kamikaze pilot?

... that the South African prop forward Okey Geffin practiced his goal kicking barefoot in a POW camp, and was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1988?

... that the Beit Jala Lions are the first all-Palestinian rugby team?

... that Wales Triple Crown winner Norman Biggs was killed after being struck by a poison arrow while on military duty in Northern Nigeria?

...that Montevideo Cricket Club claims to be the oldest rugby club outside Europe?

...that children's writer Ondřej Sekora introduced rugby to Czechoslovakia in 1926, and that he founded the country's first two clubs SK Moravská Slávie & AFK Zizka?

... that after English rugby international forward Denys Dobson was killed by a charging rhinoceros, he was reportedly said to have always had a "weak hand off"?

...that a young Idi Amin was a reserve player for the East Africa rugby union team during the 1955 British Lions tour to South Africa?

...that taoiseach Éamon de Valera was a player for Munster Rugby and a keen fan all his life?

...that in 1991 Namibia won all ten of their matches, including 2-0 series wins against both Italy and Ireland?

...that rugby union in Jordan is notable for having hosted a rugby match at the lowest altitude ever recorded - at over 400 metres below sea level on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea?

...that the Currie Cup, South Africa's premier domestic competition, was first awarded by Donald Currie to Griqualand West? Currie had accompanied the first British and Irish Lions tour to the country in 1890, and the Lions believed Griquas had produced the best performance of the tour.

...that rugby union footballer Farah Palmer captained the Black Ferns to three consecutive Women's Rugby World Cup titles?
...that Bennie Osler played 17 consecutive rugby union matches for South Africa between 1924 and 1933?

...that South African rugby player Jannie du Plessis is both a physician and professional athlete?

...that the Heartland Championship and the Air New Zealand Cup have replaced the National Provincial Championship in New Zealand rugby union?

...that the rules for a scrum in rugby union were changed in 2007 to try and reduce the number of serious neck injuries to players?

... that 13 June 2007 was the 25th anniversary of the first women's rugby international - Netherlands versus France, at Utrecht?

...that Corné Krige and George Gregan, who respectively captained the South Africa and Australia teams in both the 2002 and 2003 Tri Nations Series, were born in the same hospital in Zambia?

...that Tana Umaga is the only player to have played in the very first games of the Super 12 and the Super 14?

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