Читать книгу The Olympics - Stephen Halliday - Страница 13

A plaque at Rugby School commemorates ‘the exploit of William Webb Ellis who, with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it, thus originating the distinctive feature of the Rugby game, AD 1823’. De Coubertin would certainly have known of this claim (rugby was played in France from the 1870s having been introduced to the country by British railway engineers) but there are some serious doubts about whether Webb Ellis ever did any such thing.