Англиядағы рагби: тарихы мен жағдайы

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Sport overview
| country = England
| sport = rugby union
| image = England world cup. jpg
| imagesize = 280px
| caption = Celebrations in Trafalgar Square after England won the 2003 Rugby World Cup. | union = Rugby Football Union
| nickname =
| first = 1823, Rugby
| registered = 340,347

The Rugby Football Union are the governing body for rugby union in England.

The 11 team Premiership is the top level of competition; it is fully professional, but has a salary cap in place. The RFU Championship (formerly National Division One) and National League 1 (formerly National Division Two) are the next levels down. The Championship became fully professional in 2009–10 but many teams have since returned to semi professional; League 1 is semi professional. Below this there are many regional leagues. Attendances at club rugby in England have risen strongly since the sport went professional. Some clubs have good all seater grounds in the 10,001–25,000 capacity range; some have older grounds which are still partly terraced, and others play in council owned joint use stadia. Some clubs rent stadia from football clubs.

From 1995 through to 2014, the top level European club competition was the Heineken Cup, contested by the best teams from the Six Nations countries of England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales. Through its history, it was viewed by some as the top prize in European rugby for club teams. In April 2014, after two years of negotiations, it was confirmed that the Heineken Cup would be replaced by the new European Rugby Champions Cup beginning in the 2014–15 season. The Champions Cup includes the top eight teams from the previous season's Premiership.

The Anglo Welsh Cup, known by several sponsored names during its history, was the successor to a tournament founded in the 1971–72 season as the RFU Club Competition. It was originally a national knock out competition for English club teams, and went through several sponsored names in the next quarter century. Starting in the 2005–06 season, it was changed into a competition for Premiership clubs plus the Welsh sides competing in the Celtic League, now Pro14. The EDF National Trophy was founded in 2005–06 as a new knock out competition solely for English clubs, but Premiership sides do not take part. Through the 2013–14 season, the strongest Premiership teams took part in the Heineken Cup and the rest of the Premiership competed in the Amlin Challenge Cup. Since the 2014–15 season, the top Premiership sides compete in the Champions Cup, with the rest of the league involved in the new European Rugby Challenge Cup. Following the 2017–18 edition of the Anglo Welsh Cup, the Welsh regions pulled out of the competition in favour of creating a dedicated U 23 competition for that country alone. Premiership Rugby, the company that operates the top English flight, then announced that it would launch the new Premiership Rugby Cup, featuring all 12 league members, effective with the 2018–19 season. The competition will also feature Championship teams in 2023–24.

The British and Irish Cup was a competition founded in 2009–10 by all four Home Unions for lower tier professional and semi pro teams throughout Great Britain and Ireland. In the competition's third season it was expanded to 32 sides from its original 24; it featured all twelve teams from both the RFU Championship and the Welsh Premier Division (the level below Pro14), "A" sides from all four Irish provinces, and the top four sides from the Scottish Premiership. The 32 teams were divided into eight pools, each with a round robin format. The pool winners then advance to knockout quarter finals, followed by semi finals and a final. For season 2013–14 the competition returned to 24 sides with the reduction of Welsh clubs from twelve to four. The final English team to have won are Ealing Trailfinders in 2018. In England the tournament was replaced by the Championship Cup.

The National Schools Cup is the English school's rugby union cup competition. The cup and vase finals are held at Twickenham Stadium. Competitions are held at the U18 and U15 age group levels. At each age group there are four competitions, with stronger teams entering the cup and weaker teams in the vase, and first round losers of each entering the plate and bowl respectively.

The Middlesex 7s is the premier club level rugby sevens event held in England (note, however, that international sides have taken part on occasion).

National men's sevens teams compete annually in the London Sevens at Twickenham, which has usually been the final event in each season's World Rugby Sevens Series since 2011–12, though it is not the final event in the current 2017–18 series.

According to World Rugby, England has 1,900 rugby union clubs; 6,060 referees; 362,319 pre teen male players; 698,803 teen male players; 121,480 senior male players (total male players 1,182,602) as well as 11,000 senior female players. But these statistics are somewhat unreliable. Sport England indicates that 170,200 people play rugby at least once a week. Rugby union has often been considered, somewhat pejoratively, a 'posh' game. This may be historically linked to the split between Northern teams and the rest of the rugby fraternity over 'broken time payments', i. e. professionalism. This split led to the development of the separate sport of rugby league. The amateur ethos made it difficult for players who could not afford to take time off work to play away games or to go on tour an integral part of the rugby tradition. Rugby union in many parts of England is associated with fee paying independent schools such as Stonyhurst College or Sedbergh School who have historically provided many of the national players. It is also commonly played at Grammar schools, but Comprehensive schools in much of the country tended not to play the game, although this is no longer the case. Whilst rugby union was officially an amateur sport, many rugby union players came to play rugby league. In recent years this trend has reversed and some rugby league players have crossed codes to play union. Due to the split with most of the Yorkshire and Lancashire clubs, rugby union remained more popular in the South and the Midlands than the North of England, although this trend is now nowhere near as prevalent, with many teams in the North able to field four or five senior sides per week. The Newcastle Falcons and Sale Sharks are the only Northern teams in the Premiership, whereas Yorkshire Carnegie has also competed there previously. Although three of the teams in the Premiership have historic links with London, one of these has now moved to a neighbouring town, and only Harlequins and Saracens now play in the capital, respectively in the outer suburbs of Twickenham and Hendon (Saracens had also played in a neighbouring town before returning to London in early 2013). Historically, London was host to a number of high level professional 'exiles' clubs, notably London Scottish, London Welsh and most successfully London Irish, as well as to the defunct Wasps before its ill fated moved north to the city of Coventry. At an amateur level, however, rugby remains very strong in the London area. As of July 2022, transgender women are prohibited from playing contact rugby in women's competition; they remain eligible for male competition, in line with World Rugby rules. Transgender men may play in male competition, but have to carry out a risk assessment and sign a disclaimer, as their inclusion in the men's game as seen as more dangerous to themselves than to opponents. Both rules have provoked controversy in terms of trans inclusion, and women's safety.

English rugby union receives extensive coverage from major media outlets. Currently BT Sport covers the majority of Gallager Premiership games, the BBC and ITV share coverage of the Six Nations, Sky covers England's June & November internationals and ITV covers the Rugby World Cup. BT Sport and Sky Sports share coverage of the European club competitions. The percentage of people declaring to be interested in rugby union in England has been fairly constant over the period 1996–2005, for which we have data. This proportion decreased slightly from 24% in 1995 to 18% before the 2003 Rugby World Cup, it jumped to 27% after England's victory over Australia in the World Cup final. In 2005, 23% of the population were declaring an interest in rugby union, placing this sport at the 6th place in England. To the question whether they watch rugby union on TV, 21% of sampled people answered positively in 2005, up two points relative to 1996 (19%). In this category, it places rugby union at the second place in England behind football. The viewing figures for the final of the Premiership indicate that 91,000 viewers watched the 2011 final on TV when it was broadcast on ESPN for the first time. In 2010, the final was watched by 225,000 viewers on Sky. In terms of average attendance, the Aviva Premiership is the third best attended club competition in England behind the top two association football leagues, the Premier League and The Championship. The highest club attendances at Aviva Premiership matches are starting to become similar to some of the lower attended matches in football's Championship, with game attendances averaging 12,500 in 2011 compared with 17,400 in the football Championship. Historically rugby union was a participatory sport rather than a spectator sport in England and attendances at club games were low. Leicester Tigers for example averaged less than a hundred spectators in the 1970s. However, attendances at Twickenham for the national team have always been very high. Games in the Six Nations Championship and Rugby World Cup have always been shown on network TV. Many people watch these games but don't follow club rugby, mainly due to the fact that the pay TV Sky Sports owns the rights to the game broadcasts, and highlights are rarely shown on network television. Research from 2003 stated that the majority of spectators are from the AB1 demographic group with a gender ratio of approximately 80% male and 20% female at live domestic professional matches. However, this is a general picture of the sport across the country as a whole and, in some parts of the country, the game has widespread grassroots support. This is particularly true of the West Country, especially in Cornwall and in the cities of Bristol, Bath and Gloucester, where the game is more popular without significant class differentiation. In the Midlands, the game competes with football and the larger clubs, such as Leicester Tigers, Northampton Saints and Coventry, have considerable fanbases and strong traditions.

The England national team is currently the second best team in the history of the Six Nations Championship with three titles and one Grand Slam. When taking into account the Home Nations and Five Nations tournaments, England has more title and Grand Slams than any other nation. England contest the Calcutta Cup with Scotland and the Millennium Trophy with Ireland as part of the Six Nations Championship. They were World Champions from 2003 to 2007 and also made the finals of the 1991 and 2007 World Cups. World Rugby currently ranks England at 3rd out of 95 union playing countries. They play their home games at Twickenham in Middlesex. "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" is a song associated with the national rugby union team even though it was originally sung by black slaves on the cotton fields in the south of the U. S. A. Every four years the British and Irish Lions go on tour with players from England as well as Ireland, Scotland and Wales.