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Rugby is a collective game for the family of team sports of rugby union and rugby league, as well as the earlier forms of football from which both games, as well as Australian rules football and Gridiron football evolved.

Canadian football and to a lesser extent American football were once considered forms of rugby football but are seldom now referred to as such. In fact, the governing body of Canadian football, Football Canada, was known as the Canadian Rugby Union as late as 1967, more than fifty years after the sport parted ways with the established rules of rugby union or league.[1][2][3]

Rugby football was thought to have been started about 1845 at Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, England although forms of football in which the ball was carried and tossed date to medieval times. Rugby split into two sports in 1895, when twenty-one clubs split from the Rugby Football Union to form the Northern Rugby Football Union (later renamed the Rugby Football League in 1922) in the George Hotel, Huddersfield, over broken-time payments to players who took time off from work to play the sport, thus making rugby league the first code to turn professional and pay players. Rugby union turned professional one hundred years later in 1995, following the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa.[4][5] The respective world governing bodies are World Rugby (rugby union) and the Rugby League International Federation (rugby league).

Rugby football was one of many versions of football played at English public schools in the 19th century.[6][7] Although rugby league initially used rugby union rules, they are now wholly separate sports, with rugby league being much more similar to gridiron football. In addition to these two codes, both American and Canadian football evolved from rugby football in the beginning of the 20th century.