"Most of the credit for the spread of rugby throughout the world goes to the imperial settlers from England who took the game abroad with them as a popular leisure pursuit of the Victorian middle class. The Empire game grew roots in South Africa and New Zealand through the pioneers who settled in these far-flung lands as farmers, engineers, businessmen and, more pertinently, schoolmasters. The father of South African rugby is generally acknowledged to be Canon George Ogilvy, a whiskery old boy of Winchester and Wadham College, Oxford, who introduced a version of the game to the Diocesan College in Cape Town when he became head- master in 1861. As boys left to return home to their farms they took the game into the rugged rural areas. It was a symbol of class and education."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Sean Smith, “Rugby Union: How the imperial settlers carried an oval ball from the Pampas to Pacific”, The Independent, (30 September 1999).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rugby_league
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Rugby league
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