Rugby union (rugby) has a long history in Australia, dating back to the 1820s and potentially earlier. The first formally established rugby rules club was the Wallaroo FC in Sydney in 1870. The same club led the formation in 1874 of the Southern Rugby Football Union (now the NSWRU), the first rugby union body outside of England (1871) and Scotland (1873), and before Queensland (1883). In the 1880s and 1890s the sport surged in popularity in both New South Wales and Queensland which, along with the later formed Australian Capital Territory (ACT), remain today as the code's strongholds in the country per the Waratahs (NSW), Reds (Queensland) and Brumbies (ACT).

Throughout the 20th century, Australia (the "Wallabies") became a top international team, frequently exchanging tours with rugby union in the British Isles, South Africa and New Zealand. Australia holds tier-one status with World Rugby and has been a core participant in the Tri Nations Series/Rugby Championship. Domestically the country has four professional teams that compete in the Super Rugby and runs its own separate competition known as Super Rugby AUS, organised by the governing body Rugby Australia (RA). Australia co-hosted the first Rugby World Cup (RWC) alongside trans-Tasman neighbour New Zealand in 1987. They were sole hosts of the 2003 edition and were awarded the hosting rights for 2027.

Early history and nineteenth century

Pre-codification football

There is some evidence of indigenous Australian forms of football being played in Australia, before the European arrival. Some of these involved kick and catch games. Early Europeans may well have played their own forms of traditional football as well, which involved kicking and handling. With the arrival of Europeans, a form of football was played very early on with matches being played in by 1829 in Sydney, Melbourne by 1840, Brisbane by 1849, and Tasmania by 1851. Most of these early games took part at local festivals, with no clear set of rules being used, and no codified version of any game being played.

The first reports of a sport like rugby being played in Australia date back to the 1820s when visiting ship crews would play army teams at Barrack Square (now Wynyard Park).

The versions played locally in this period borrowed elements from the various codes that are present today including Australian rules, soccer and rugby with the rules played being decided prior to the start of the match. However the Cambridge Rules were predominant in country in the Colony of Victoria from 1841 and Harrow football was the predominant code in Colony of South Australia from 1843.Pill, Shane. (2020). 1860-2010: Celebrating 150 years of organised football in South Australia.In Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) rugby was being played at Christ College in Bishopsbourne in the late 1840s. Rugby football and Australian rules football In 1858, inspired by the popularity of the novel Tom Brown's School Days and its depiction of life at Rugby School, English public school football games began to be played in Melbourne and surrounding districts. The earliest known such match was played on 15 June 1858 between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar School on the St Kilda foreshore. On 25 September 1858 the South Yarra FC and a team composed of members of the Melbourne Cricket Club (forerunner of the Melbourne FC) met in what many regard as the first club rugby game in Australia.

Reacting to concerns about the dangers and complexity of the rugby game and its rules, Australian rules football was (as the Melbourne FC rules) devised at meeting on 17 May 1859. One of the co-founders of the game was Tom Wills. At the age of 14, Wills was sent to England to attend Rugby School, where he became captain of Rugby's cricket team and a star at the football game.

Even Wills, who favoured many rules of Rugby School football, saw the need for compromise. He wrote to his brother Horace: "Rugby was not a game for us, we wanted a winter pastime but men could be harmed if thrown on the ground so we thought differently."de Moore, Greg. Tom Wills: His Spectacular Rise and Tragic Fall. Allen & Unwin, 2008. , p. 94

Rugby football in Australia and popularity

The first football clubs established in Sydney in 1865-69 had adopted from Melbourne the Australian rules game. While the Sydney University FC cites it was founded in 1863 and the birthplace of rugby in Australia, there is no clear evidence of what its playing rules in the 1860s were. By 1869, interest in football in Sydney football had declined to only two games were recorded. Both were played under improvised, mixed rules between teams of the University and the crew of the visiting British naval ship, HMS Rosario.

This left the city as an open field when Sydney's first formally established rugby club the Wallaroo FC was founded in 1870 by former Rugby School students. The club declared it would not play any other football code. In what is now Australia's first confirmed game under rugby rules, Wallaroo played against British 'Army & Navy' team on 18 June 1870 at the Sydney Cricket Ground. The club's first rules famously included at Rule XXIII a provision which prohibited the "throttling or strangling" of opponents. The club's only other opponents in rugby games in 1870 were a team from the University. On 23 June 1871 a meeting was held at the Metropolitan Hotel to formally establish the Sydney University FC who today are Australia's oldest rugby union club.

In 1874 the Wallaroos led the formation of the Southern Rugby Football Union (now the NSWRU) ensuring its unaltered adoption of England's rugby union rules and a by-law that members (clubs and schools) could not play against non-members. This effectively discouraged any new club forming under a rival code as it would have no one to play. The other clubs with Wallaroo at the founding meeting were Goulburn, Waratah FC, Balmain, St. Leonards, The King’s School, Camden College and Newington College. In the oldest remaining rivalry game in Australian rugby union, The King's School and Newington still play each other annually via the AAGPS (NSW) Rugby competition.

The first intercolonial football match in Australia under any code occurred on 23 June 1877 when the Waratah FC met Victoria's Carlton FC in a rugby game held at the Albert Cricket Ground in Sydney. The clubs met again two days later under Victorian rules. The following season Waratah and Carlton played two further games in Melbourne under each other's code.

Rugby was first played in Queensland in 1876, however by the late 1870s the only code was Australian rules. In the early 1880s agitation saw the Queensland Football Association (QFA / Australian rules) allow its member clubs to play occasional games in Brisbane under rugby rules. The first of what immediately became annual inter-colonial rugby games occurred in Sydney in 1882 after the Southern Rugby Football Union (SRFU / now NSWRU) enticed a party of rugby-aligned players from the Queensland clubs to make a visit. New South Wales (now Waratahs) defeated Queensland (now Reds) by 28 points to 4 at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) in front of 4,000 spectators.

The visit was reciprocated in 1883, boosting support for rugby union in Brisbane and Ipswich, and culminating in the formation of the Northern Rugby Football Union (NRFU / now the QRU) at a meeting held on 2 November 1883 at the Exchange Hotel in Brisbane. The NRFU formed two in-house teams (Wanderers and Fireflies) and were soon joined by new clubs (including Wasps FC) and converts from the QFA (such as Brisbane's Wallaroo FC).

As a result of the formation of the NRFU, several prominent GPS schools took up rugby as opposed to Melbourne Rules.

Meanwhile in 1882 the first rugby clubs in Western Australia were founded in Perth and Fremantle. At the end of the 1882 season the SRFU undertook its inaugural NSW team tour of New Zealand, and in 1884 a New Zealand team travelled to NSW for matches in Sydney, Bathurst and Newcastle, commencing a regular exchange of tours between the colonies.

In 1888 the first British and Irish Lions tour took place, and although unsanctioned by official bodies in Europe, the 21-man squad travelled to both Australia and New Zealand. The 1888 and 1889 seasons visits to Australia from the New Zealand Native team. These international visits gave rise to the founding of the first Melbourne RFC formed in Victoria in 1888. In 1892, the rugby bodies in Australia dropped Southern and Northern from their titles, adopting New South Wales and Queensland respectively.

In 1893, Frank Ivory was the first Indigenous Australian to play representative rugby union (for Queensland).

In and around 1900 club rugby union in the major cities and towns across New South Wales and Queensland, including Sydney, Brisbane and Newcastle, introduced district clubs football with geographic residential qualification rules, and in the process caused the disbanding of the established clubs. In Sydney the resultant club competition in 1900 included present day Shute Shield clubs Northern Suburbs (North Sydney), Eastern Suburbs and West Harbour (Western Suburbs).

While many clubs claim to have been founded in the last quarter of the 1800s, almost all do not have a continuous unbroken existence, primarily due to the impact of the dominance of rugby league between the 1910s and 1950s. Northern Suburbs and Eastern Suburbs have played every season since 1920, making them the oldest continuously present rugby union clubs in Australia outside of the schools and universities.

The earliest formed rugby union club outside of the schools and universities that is still playing are the Maryborough Wallaroos who were founded in 1893 and then in 1910 swapped codes to rugby league. The earliest (oldest) rugby-playing provenance, including schools and universities, is held by the University of Tasmania's Christ College ('known as the Black Pigs') dating back to the students first playing in 1847.

Birth of the Wallabies The Australia's national rugby union team (now Wallabies), played its debut test match at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1899, versus a touring British Lions side. The first Australian team captain was Frank Row of the Wallaroo FC. In 1903, Australia played its first test against the New Zealand All Blacks, in front of a crowd of 30,000 at the Sydney Cricket Ground. In 1907, Australia again played the All Blacks, at the same venue.

The team's first international tour to the Northern hemisphere was organised for 1908-09, when a squad of players travelled for nine months through England, Wales, France and North America. At a pre-tour function in Sydney it was announced the team would be called "the Rabbits", which British newspapers soon picked up on. The side played two matches on the way to England, but after arrival decided to hold a team meeting to choose an alternative name, with the "Wallabies" ultimately voted upon to replace "Rabbits". Invited to play in the rugby union tournament that was a part of the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, Australia won the gold medal, defeating the English team (Cornwall).

Throughout the 1908-09 tour the team performed a war cry that was claimed at the time to have Aboriginal Australians origins.Subsequent tours by Australian teams briefly continued this tradition until it was last seen in 1913.

At first "Wallabies" only pertained to the 1908-09 squad, until the 1930s when it came into official and popular for all overseas tours by the national team. The fashion to call all Australian teams the "Wallabies", whether home or away, came in the wake of the success of the 1984 Grand Slam Wallabies tour.

Arrival of rugby league

By the time England's new "Northern Union game" arrived in Australia it was fundamentally different from rugby union, with lineouts, rucks and two players from each team having already been removed, and the play-the-ball introduced.