Office Bearers 2007-08

We at the Queen's Rugby Club extend a warm welcome to all new students and potential members. In a brief commentary it is only possible to provide a flavour of the club but we hope that it will whet your appetite to join us in this sporting corner of the University community.

At over 130 years old we are one of the oldest clubs in Ireland, boasting a long lineage of famous Irish rugby players.

The History

Queen's University Belfast has a record of academic achievement which stretches back more than 150 years.

Founded by Queen Victoria, the Queen's University in Ireland, was designed to be a non-denominational alternative to Trinity College Dublin which was controlled by the Anglican Church.

The University was made up of three Queen's Colleges - in Cork, Galway and Belfast. Although it was the first University in the north of Ireland, Queen's drew on a tradition of learning that goes back to 1810 and the foundation of the Belfast Academical Institution.

Its collegiate department, which provided University-style education, closed with the establishment of Queen's and four of its professors and many of its students transferred to the new college.

Founded in 1845, it was 1849 when the first students entered the magnificent new college building designed and built by Charles Lanyon. Since then, the University estate has grown to more than 300 buildings - many of them listed for their architectural importance. The first batch of students numbered 90. Today there are some 23,000.

Queen's University Rugby Club

University/Malone Playing Fields,

Dub Pavilion, Dub Lane,

BT9 5NB

TEL: 028 9062 3946

FAX: 028 9061 3999

Queen's University Rugby Football Club was founded 138 years ago and since then has played a prominent part in Irish rugby.

Queen's College had 353 students when the rugby club was formed and played its first match against the North of Ireland Football and Cricket Club on Saturday, 16th January, 1869.

There was no limit to the number of players nor the duration of the match that continued for three Saturdays. Queen's had the greater number of players and eventually won. Scoring was recorded by goals, dropped goals or kicks after touch-down. Standing on the cross-pole to save kicks at goal was not permitted. Players wore knee-high stockings, knickerbockers and unstudded boots.

The original balls were made from hand-sewn leather panels covering an inflated bladder of a pig. The early bladders were blown up by James Gilbert, the founder of the firm which still bears his name today. The rubber bladder and inflator were introduced in 1871 and the oval-shaped 'modern' ball evolved as the schoolboys at Rugby found it could be kicked with more accuracy.

By the 1870s, the number of players was reduced to twenty and, by the turn of the century, players were organised into forwards, half-backs, three-quarters and full-backs. Throughout these changes Queen's continued to supply a steady stream of international players.

In 1886, Queen's College became The Queen's University of Belfast and many medical students with a six-year university undergraduate course gained international honours, sometimes finding that rugby "tended to retard their conquest of the medical curriculum". In the 1920s, George Stephenson had a then world record of 42 caps, which stood for a quarter of a century, until Jack Kyle, another Queen's medical student, gained 47 caps.

In 1953, Queen's was the first club side to tour Canada and the U.S.A. This was followed by a short tour to Germany and a few years later to Pau and Bayonne.

In 1968, the club went to East Africa and returned to Canada in 1972 and again in 1980, going to British Colombia and San Francisco, while the 1993 party was limited to the Eastern Provinces of Canada. Japan, Hong Kong and Malaysia were toured in 1976. In 1990, Queen's won the European Universities Championships in Bordeaux. In 1993, they had a tour to Ontario and, more recently, a tour to Italy in 1999.

Over the years, 82 Queen's players have won representative national honours, totalling nearly 700 caps, Eight members of the club have been elected President of the Irish Rugby Football Union, and eleven members were elected President of the Ulster Branch.

On the Ulster team, European Cup winners in 1999, were graduates David Humphreys (Captain), Gary Longwell, Rab Irwin, Richie Weir, Gary Leslie, and Robin Morrow, all former Queen's players.