The ‘Father of Rugby Football?’ William Webb Ellis and the Rugby World Cup

The sight of hordes of excited, expectant people checking in to Britain’s hotels this month can mean only one thing – not the lure of a discounted late-summer trip to the seaside – but the start of the eighth Rugby Union World Cup. The beginning of the event on 18th September marked the second time that the UK has hosted the competition. Public interest is reaching fever pitch as we sit glued to our TVs, agonisingly hoping for another Jonny Wilkinson-inspired moment. The victorious nation will crown their achievement by lifting the William Webb Ellis Cup at Twickenham on 31 October. But just who was William Webb Ellis?

With access to millions of pages of digital archival material here at Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, I decided to dig a little deeper into the legend which surrounds the man…

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