William Webb Ellis and rugby’s enduring foundational myth | Letters

Ken Sheard says he and Eric Dunning thoroughly debunked the story of Webb Ellis’s invention of the game, while Anne Cowper questions the use of the term ‘home side’I agree wholeheartedly that the story of William Webb Ellis’s “invention” of rugby football is a myth (Rugby’s big lie, Sport, 17 September), but question the claim that your article provides “new evidence to prove that Ellis was not the first to run with the ball”. Eric Dunning and I thoroughly debunked the Webb Ellis story in Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players (1979, 2005), with a further attempt made in the New Dictionary of Natio…