Rugby union in Romania

The game was introduced to Romania from France at the turn of the 20th century by students returning with rugby balls from their studies in Paris.[5] Romanian rugby took root in Bucharest, established by students who had been to French universities, and by the capital's burgeoning middle class.[5] Stadiul Român and seventeen other teams would be formed in Bucharest from 1913 onwards. The Romanian Rugby Championship was first contested in 1914. Romania played France for the first time in 1924.[5]

Romania versus France at the Inter-Allied Games of 1919

The nation's first international was played against the USA in 1919 six years after the game was first introduced.[4] In 1931 a governing body was formed, the Federaţia Română de Rugby.

The first team outside Bucharest was formed at an aircraft factory in Braşov in 1939.

For the first half of the 20th century, Romanian rugby was fairly isolated, having most of its contact with France,[5] and to an extent, the Iron Curtain in the second half did not help either. However, this "isolation" was broken when Rowe Harding took the Welsh team Swansea touring there, to play national champions, Locomotiva.[5] On his return to the UK, Harding spoke highly of the Romanian game, speaking of its consistently high standard and of the passion of both the fans and the players, which he thought unparallelled in Europe outside the Five Nations.[5] The tour and Harding's praise effectively opened up Romanian rugby to the rest of western Europe, sparking a number of tours travelling to and from the country.[5] In 1955, a Romanian side toured England and Wales, playing Swansea, Cardiff, Bristol and the Harlequins, winning one, drawing two, and losing one.[5] Later in 1955, the Romanians defeated Llanelli in Moscow, and then beat both Cardiff and Harlequins in Bucharest.[5] Only France, who played Romania before almost 95,000 fans in Bucharest (in a preliminary match to a soccer international), could beat the Romanians, and that was only after an epic 16-15 battle.[5]

A generation of French school-trained coaches from the late 1940s and 1950s laid the foundations for national success in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. In 1974 Romania won against France 15 – 10 in Bucharest,[6] and the FIRA – Association of European Rugby championship.[7] In 1975 Romania went for an 8 games tour to New Zealand, tour concluded in Wellington with a 10-10 draw against Junior All Blacks. Home nation sides began to award international caps for matches against Romania from 1981. Romania won rugby internationals over Scotland in 1984 and 1991, and also over Wales in 1983 and 1988 (the later in Cardiff).[5] Between 1960 and 1990, Romania beat France eight times, the most famous being in 1990 when the legendary French based no. 8 Hari Dumitras led Romania to a 12-6 victory in Auch, France.[5] Canadian second row Norm Hadley believed the 1991 Rugby World Cup game against Romania was more physically sapping than playing either France or New Zealand.[5]

The former All Blacks scrum half Chris Laidlaw, writing at the end of the 1970s, saw rugby as a positive force in East-West relations at the time:

"Rugby has become the ping-pong of outdoor sports in its capacity to spread goodwill between East and West. Over the last 30 or 40 years it has spread through Eastern Europe, establishing itself strongly in Rumania and Yugoslavia, Hungary and into the USSR. The fact that a Russian team [sic] has finally played a full-scale, if unofficial Test match against France speaks for itself."

"Rugby tours between countries on either side of the Iron Curtain have generated considerable political interest among the governments concerned, and the results can be quite astonishing. The recent Rumanian tour of New Zealand, for instance, germinated other contacts between the two countries and was partly instrumental in the establishment of new trade agreements which otherwise might not have begun."[8]

Chris Laidlaw writing of the open secret of shamateurism in Soviet sport said:

"So far as the East Europeans and the Russians are concerned, who knows where the incentives lie? In such societies rugby, like many other sports before it, is becoming an expression of national achievement and therefore the subject of careful nurturing. Yet, is the risk of the double standard, so evident in the athletic arena, permeating the East Europeans' approach to rugby so great as to justify the exclusion of the Communist world indefinitely from regular rugby competition?"[8]

"Much to everyone's surprise, Eastern Bloc countries are among the game's vigorous participants, seemingly oblivious to rugby's capitalist class-ridden origins. Russia emerged from behind the Iron Curtain and came under international scrutiny when they played France in Toulouse in November 1978. Romania, Poland and Czechoslovakia are members of the Federation Internationale de Rugby Amateur, the governing body for those countries not in the IB."[9]

After the fall of Communism in 1989, Romanian rugby union suffered a dramatic financial shortfall. In 1995 the first ever Heineken Cup match took place in Romania with Toulouse taking on Farul Constanţa.

Romania first got regular international competition when they joined the newly formed European Nations Cup in 2000. As an indication of the decline in standard of the sport in Romania, the national team was defeated 134-0 by England in 2001 and Dinamo Bucharest lost 151-0 to Saracens in the European Rugby Shield.

Bucureşti Rugby was formed to represent Romania in European club competitions in 2004. In recent years they have achieved respectable results, including a win in 2010 against an Italian super 10 side.

• Barbu, Aurel, Stama, Tiberiu, File din istoria rugbiului românesc, Editura Consiliului Național pentru Educație Fizică și Sport, București, 1969.
• Manoileanu, Dumitru, Rugby: Mică enciclopedie, Editura Sport-Turism, București, 1982
• Moldoveanu, Traian Rugby: istorie românească: povestită de un griviţean, Vol. I, Editura Scripta, București, 2016, ISBN 978-973-8238-56-5)