International Rugby Events
European Union
All kind of International Rugby Events, like June Tours, Pacific cups and all others.
Italy vs Samoa
Match scheduled:
Date: 28-11-2009
Time: 15:00 until 17:00
Autumn Internationals / And Of Year Tours
Rugby in Italy goes back around a century, and it has been established that British communities brought rugby to Genoa between 1890 and 1895, with other confirmations of games in Italy around 1909. The society that organised the first games didn't survive long and dissolved soon after them.
Its traditional heartland consisted of the small country towns in the Po Valley and other parts of Northern Italy.[6] One version says that Italian workers returning from France, particularly the south, introduced the game there, and gave it a significant rural/working class base, which still exists in towns such as Treviso and Rovigo.[6] A demonstration game was also played in 1910 in Turin between Racing Club París and Servette of Geneva. French students also introduced the game to Milan University c. 1911. While each of these events has been hailed as the "origin of Italian rugby", it seems that they probably happened more or less simultaneously and independent of one another, and that the introduction of rugby to Italy was a series of events, rather than a single starting point. Whatever the ultimate origins of the game in northern Italy, the region's proximity to the French rugby heartland helped as well.
The first match played by a representative Italian XV was in 1911, between US Milanese and Voiron of France. On July 25 of the same year the "Propaganda Committee" was formed which in 1928 became the Federazione Italiana Rugby (FIR).
An original organisational committee was established in 1911, although it was in 1928 when the body became the FIR.
