The history of the goal posts
The goal posts are one of the most recognizable features on a rugby field. Were they there from the moment of rugby’s inception? Have they evolved through the years? We take a look.
The first mentions of a physical goalmouth are credited to writers John Norden and Richard Carew in the late 16th and early 17th centuries while describing Cornish hurling, a rule-free rugby-style rampage using a small silver sphere (quidditch without flying, basically). Carew described the construction of something totally new. “Two bushes in the ground, some eight or 10 foote asunder,” he wrote, “they terme their goales.”
This arrangement of foliage was a breakthrough. Instead of being simply an orgy of destruction, what the Cornishmen unleashed was an orgy of destruction with a goal, in both senses of the word. Half a century later, the word was clearly part of Britain’s sporting lexicon.
“I’ll play a gole at camp-ball,” wrote John Day in 1659’s The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green. Camp-ball was another early invention that focused strongly on face-punching and eye-gouging – but unlike Italian calcio, in which the objective was to get violently from one end of the pitch to the other, it had a target.
By the end of the 17th century, the idea was commonplace. A Sutton Coldfield play area was described in Francis Willughby’s Book of Games as having “a close that has a gate at either end. The gates are called goals.” The game was on.
The goal (= purpose, end to be reached, target) mostly took its shape from the doorway into the leader’s house when the game was played within a village or town.
At Rugby School their version of “football” differed from those of the rest of England, with the rule that players could hold and carry the ball in their arms. Legend has it that one player in 1823 disregarded the established rules, tucked the ball under his arm, and dashed across the goal of the opponents.
By the 1830’s, running with the ball at Rugby School was in common use and 18 foot goal posts had been added with a cross-bar at 10 feet above the ground. The innovation of the cross-bar was accompanied by a rule that a goal could only be scored by the ball passing over the bar from a place kick or drop kick.
Apparently this was done to make scoring easier from further out and also to avoid the horde of defenders standing in and blocking the goal. These were the “H” shaped posts still found at many lower levels of football.
The “H” goal post was painted white for kicking points. This contraption had a hollow space underneath, but that was only because the two vertical uprights needed support. Points scored went through the uprights and not under the crossbar.
Historically, no points at all were awarded for a try, the reward being to “try” to score a goal (to kick the ball over the crossbar and between the posts). Modern points scoring was introduced in the late 1880s,[43] and was uniformly accepted by the Home Nations for the 1890/91 season.
The balance in value between tries and conversions has changed greatly over the years. Until 1891, a try scored one point, a conversion two. For the next two years, tries scored two points and conversion three. In 1893, the modern pattern of tries scoring more was begun, with three points awarded for a try, two for a kick. The number of points from a try increased to four in 1971[43] and five in 1992.
Penalties have been worth three points since 1891 (they previously had been worth two points). The value of the drop goal was four points between 1891 and 1948, three points at all other times.
Because the goal became packed it was decided to extend the line of the goal and a line was cut through each goal, parallel to each other.
How high are rugby posts?
Goal posts in rugby union have a minimum height of 3.4m (just over 11 feet), are 5.6m apart and made of aluminium or steel. Different heights are used for different ages with junior rugby posts being between 5m and 9m tall.
The top edge of the crossbar should be 3m from the ground, whatever the height of the vertical posts which can also have as much as 30cm of padding on them.
In reality, especially in international rugby, the posts can be as high as 17m and the Guinness Book of Records says the tallest posts in the world were erected at Wednesbury RFC in the West Midlands in 2014. They stood at 38.35m or 125ft 9.84in.
That might be a bit much but they might have done James Hook a favour if they had been shipped out to New Zealand.
Post dimensions
For both Rugby League and Rugby Union, the posts should be 5.5m apart and connected by a crossbar 3m from the ground. The height of posts can vary depending on the age and level of the players.
