County Championship (rugby union)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The County Championship is an annual rugby union competition in England between teams representing English counties. After restructuring in 2007 the top tier of the Championship has been known as the Bill Beaumont Cup, after the trophy awarded to the competition winners was named in honour of Bill Beaumont, a former England and British Lions captain.[1] Teams also compete for the County Championship Shield and County Championship Plate.

The English County Championship has a long history, being first officially recognised by the Rugby Football Union in 1889. The 2009 Championship was the 109th competition. The most successful county, Lancashire, has won the competition 19 times, closely followed by Gloucestershire (17) and Yorkshire (14). Gloucestershire (33) and Lancashire (28) have made the most appearances in contested finals.

On four occasions the tournament final has been tied at full time and a second leg rematch has been played. Two of these rematches were also tied and on these occasions (1907 and 1967) the finalists were declared joint winners. In 1991 the final match between Cornwall and Yorkshire was tied at full time and extra time was played, with Cornwall winning 29-20.

[edit] Structure

There was little formal structure to the first official years of the competition, with teams playing different numbers of matches and different opposition from across England. The winners were determined by a panel of judges from the RFU Committee. From 1892-1895, the four winners of four regional Championships (North East, North West, South East and South West) played a round robin to determine the overall winner of the County Championship.

A restructure in 1896, led to the creation of North and South regions only, the winners of these regional competitions playing a final for the County Championship. Another restructure in 1921 saw the formation of 5 regions and the knock-out stage of the championship extend to semi-finals and a final. The winners of the North East, North West and South East regions were entered into a semi-final draw along with the winners of a playoff between the winners of the South and South West regions.

Since 2007, the top 8 counties have been split into two regions of 4 teams, North and South, who play a round robin tournament, the winners of which compete for the English County Championship in the final. This format is repeated for the 8 counties that compete for the County Championship Shield. The 11 counties which compete for the County Championship Plate are split into 3 pools from which the winners and runner-up with the best record meet in semi-final matches.

[edit] Past Winners

From 1984 all Championship finals were played at Twickenham.

[edit] External links

• http://countyrugby.com/index.html
• http://www.rfu.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/RFUHome.Community_Detail/StoryID/19903