This rugby trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers both codes and every level of the game. It opens with the basics - how many players, what a try is worth, why the ball is oval, what a hooker does - then the origin story: the Webb Ellis legend at Rugby School, the 1871 founding of the RFU, and the 1895 split in Huddersfield that created rugby league. From there it goes international: the Rugby World Cup and its winners, the 1995 final that Nelson Mandela made unforgettable, the Six Nations and its trophies (the Calcutta Cup, the Grand Slam, the Wooden Spoon), the All Blacks and the haka, the British and Irish Lions, State of Origin, sevens at the Olympics, and the great players from Jonah Lomu to Richie McCaw, Jonny Wilkinson, Dan Carter and Siya Kolisi. Roughly a third of the questions are easy warm-ups for casual fans; the rest climb toward genuine pub-quiz stumpers. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many players does each side field in rugby union?
15
Eight are forwards wearing 1-8 and seven are backs wearing 9-15; rugby league plays with two fewer.
Q 02How many points is a try worth in rugby union?
Five
The conversion afterwards adds two, and a penalty or drop goal scores three; in rugby league a try is worth four.
Q 03How many players are on each rugby league team?
13
League split from union in 1895 over paying players; the NRL and Super League are its premier club competitions.
Q 04By legend, what did William Webb Ellis do in an 1823 school football match to invent rugby?
Picking up the ball and running with it
Catching the ball was allowed; running with it was not. He became a clergyman and died in France in 1872, leaving £9,000 mostly to charity.
Q 05In which English county is Rugby School, where the game was supposedly born?
Warwickshire
It was founded in 1567 with money from Lawrence Sheriff, a grocer to Elizabeth I, and reshaped by headmaster Thomas Arnold.
Q 06In which year was the Rugby Football Union formed and the first international played?
1871
The RFU was created by clubs that had left the Football Association over 'hacking'; the first international was at Raeburn Place, Edinburgh.
Q 07In which West Yorkshire town did the 1895 split that created rugby league take place?
Huddersfield
Northern clubs quit the RFU over reimbursing working-class players for lost wages; the rule differences came later.
Q 08In what year did rugby union finally drop its restrictions on paying players and go professional?
1995
It happened as the World Cup in South Africa ended, and the money talks that followed created the Tri Nations and SANZAR.
Q 09In a rugby union scrum, which player is responsible for 'hooking' the ball back with a foot?
The hooker
The same player usually throws the ball into line-outs, where the tall locks compete for it.
Q 10How many players from each team make up a rugby union scrum?
Eight
Front row (two props and a hooker), second row (two locks) and back row (two flankers and a number 8).
Q 11The first Rugby World Cup in 1987 was co-hosted by which two countries?
New Zealand and Australia
Sixteen teams took part until 1999, when it grew to twenty; it expands to twenty-four in Australia in 2027.
Q 12Which nation has won the Rugby World Cup the most times?
South Africa
Four titles to New Zealand's three; Australia has two and England one, and no other country has won it.
Q 13The Webb Ellis Cup is nicknamed 'Bill'. Which team's 1991 winners coined the name?
The Wallabies
The gilded silver trophy is 38 cm tall and follows a 1740s design by Paul de Lamerie.
Q 21Which two opponents did Siya Kolisi's Springboks beat in the 2019 and 2023 RWC finals?
England, then New Zealand
He was appointed captain in 2018, the first black man to lead the Springboks, and lifted the trophy in 2019 and 2023.
Q 22What was Europe's annual championship called when it began in 1883 with England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales?
The Home Nations
France joined in 1910 to make it Five Nations, and Italy in 2000 made it Six.
Q 23In the Six Nations, what is a team said to have won if it beats all five opponents?
The Grand Slam
Q 14Who kicked the extra-time drop goal that won the Springboks the 1995 World Cup final 15-12?
Joel Stransky
Nelson Mandela then presented the trophy to captain Pienaar wearing a Springbok jersey - a moment later dramatised in Invictus.
Q 15Why had the Springboks never competed in a Rugby World Cup before hosting in 1995?
It had been excluded during apartheid
The IRFB readmitted the country in 1992; 1995 was also the first World Cup hosted by a single nation.
Q 16How many tries did Jonah Lomu score against England in the 1995 World Cup semi-final?
Four
He had become the youngest ever All Black the year before, aged 19 years and 45 days, and was diagnosed with a kidney disorder that same year.
Q 17Jonny Wilkinson's winning drop goal in the 2003 World Cup final in Sydney came against which team?
The Wallabies
It came in the last minute of extra time in Sydney; he later won two Heineken Cups with Toulon.
Q 18How many test caps did Richie McCaw finish with, then a world record?
148
He captained the All Blacks in 110 of them, won two World Cups and was named World Rugby's player of the decade for 2011-2020.
Q 19In which position did Richie McCaw predominantly play?
Openside flanker
He was the first rugby union player to reach 100 test wins and won World Player of the Year a joint-record three times.
Q 20What record total did Dan Carter overtake to become international rugby's leading scorer in November 2010?
1,178
The record had belonged to Jonny Wilkinson, who briefly took it back in 2011 before Carter reclaimed it; Carter was man of the match in the 2015 final.
The Triple Crown is only for a Home Nation beating the other three; the Wooden Spoon goes to whoever finishes last.
Q 24England and Scotland contest the Calcutta Cup. The trophy was made in 1878 by melting down what?
A defunct club's rupees
The Calcutta Football Club's remaining members withdrew 270 rupees from the bank; the lid is topped with an elephant.
Q 25How many outright Six Nations titles, including earlier forms, had England won by 2025?
29
England and Wales were level on 39 titles overall when shared championships are counted; Wales had 28 outright.
Q 26Which nation joined the Six Nations in 2000?
Italy
Its match with France is played for the Giuseppe Garibaldi Trophy.
Q 27The All Blacks' nickname reportedly arose in 1905 when a London newspaper wrote they played as if they were what?
'All backs'
That touring side, the 'Originals', lost only once in 34 games - to Wales - and by then wore all black bar the silver fern.
Q 28The All Blacks' haka 'Ka Mate' is attributed to which Ngāti Toa war leader?
Te Rauparaha
The pre-match tradition began with the 1888-89 New Zealand Native team's tour; Māori scholars say it is a posture dance, not strictly a war dance.
Q 29How many Rugby Championship (formerly Tri Nations) titles did the All Blacks win in its first 30 years?
Twenty
They won the inaugural 1996 Tri Nations unbeaten; Argentina joined the competition in 2012.
Q 30Which trophy has been contested in trans-Tasman tests since the 1930s?
The Bledisloe Cup
The Calcutta Cup, between England and Scotland, predates it by more than half a century.