TAKE A LOOK BACK ON THE WAY RUGBY WAS INTERNATIONALIZED AND APPEARED IN ASIA (TO BE CONTINUED)

The World Cup Rugby 2019 was firstly held in Japan, which was also the first time this international rugby event took place in an Asia nation but not in other Rugby heavens such as Europe, Oceania, or South Africa. 

At that time, choosing Japan as the host of The World Rugby, World Rugby Organization Department was in full determination to let rugby invade into other cultures, then internationalize it. At that moment, rugby had been really attractive and appealing to Europe, Oceania or Africa, however, it had been rarely known when it came to other continents. 

Rugby is a sport which history of playing is more than 100 years. Since 1886, the International Rugby Football Board was founded and brought out the rules which required each rugby team’s number of members was from 7 to 15.

It had to be until 1987 did the first World Cup Rugby was held in New Zealand. At that time, the International Rugby World only had 8 official members. After this event, World Rugby has successfully attracted 105 official members.

However, because of the complicated rules, rugby was still a rarely-to-known sport in many nations of the world and The World Cup Rugby was still a behind-the-door one. During the period from 1987 to 2019, there had only been 25 national teams taking part in the World Cup Rugby and the highlighted names for finals were New Zeland, Australia, South Africa or England.