The game has its origins in England in the 1820s, when a Rugby School student named William Webb Ellis did something a bit different during a schoolyard game and caught the ball and carried it forward, rather than back towards his own line, which was traditional. It took a while for the rules to be agreed between the different schools and organisations in England many of whom had their own games but by the 1860s the Rugby rules had gained in popularity and started spreading beyond England.