Rugby union in Italy is governed by the Italian Rugby Federation. Rugby was introduced into Italy in the early 1900s. It is also known as pallovale or palla ovale ("oval ball") within Italy. Two Italian professional teams (Treviso and Zebre) compete in United Rugby Championship, a league that also includes sides from Ireland, Scotland, South Africa and Wales. One of the teams is guaranteed a place in the European Rugby Champions Cup; the other normally plays in the European Rugby Challenge Cup. The Top12 is the main national club competition. Four Italian clubs from the national championship compete in a qualifying tournament that awards two places in the Challenge Cup. Italy competes in the Six Nations Championship and Rugby World Cup, and is classified as a tier one nation by World Rugby (formerly the International Rugby Board).
Governing body
The governing body of Italian rugby union is the Federazione Italiana Rugby (FIR). An original organisational committee was established in 1911, although it was in 1928 when the body became the FIR, and in 1987, it joined the International Rugby Board. In 1934 the FIR became a founding member of the Federation Internationale de Rugby Amateur.
Popularity
There are 1,024 rugby clubs within Italy. These clubs support 153,173 registered male players, as well as 8,118 registered female players.
Many teams are either from Veneto or Lombardy in the north of Italy as this area has the most Rugby popularity however the sport has achieved national presence as it is played and followed throughout the country. Rugby is now estimated to be the third most popular sport in Italy behind Football and Basketball.
Italian players also play for other European rugby clubs, such as those in the Aviva Premiership.
History
Prehistory
The remote ancestry of rugby has been linked to a Roman game known as harpastum, which spread throughout their Empire, include the province of Britannia. Athenaeus writes: "Harpastum, which used to be called Phaininda, is the game I like most of all. Great are the exertion and fatigue attendant upon contests of ball-playing, and violent twisting and turning of the neck. Hence Antiphanes, "Damn it, what a pain in the neck I've got." He describes the game thus: "He seized the ball and passed it to a team-mate while dodging another and laughing. He pushed it out of the way of another. Another fellow player he raised to his feet. All the while the crowd resounded with shouts of Out of bounds, Too far, Right beside him, Over his head, On the ground, Up in the air, Too short, Pass it back in the scrum."
Galen, in On Exercise with the Small Ball, describes Harpastum as: "better than wrestling or running because it exercises every part of the body, takes up little time, and costs nothing."; it was "profitable training in strategy", and could be "played with varying degrees of strenuousness." Galen adds, "When, for example, people face each other, vigorously attempting to prevent each other from taking the space between, this exercise is a very heavy, vigorous one, involving much use of the hold by the neck, and many wrestling holds."
This game was apparently a Romanized version of a Greek game called phaininda. The general impression from ancient descriptions is of a game quite similar to rugby. Additional descriptions suggest a line was drawn in the dirt, and that the teams would endeavor to keep the ball behind their side of the line and prevent the opponents from reaching it. This seems rather like an 'inverted' form of football. If the opponents had the ball on their side of the line, the objective would seem to be to get in and "pass" it to another player, or somehow get it back over the line.
Another remote Roman ancestor of rugby may be a game called trigon, which involved three players passing a ball to one another by hand. The ball was usually small and hard, but occasionally it was a follis or large bladder-ball.