| Description : Rugby, a team sport that originated in England together with
football and is played with a ball in the shape of an elongated ellipsoid of revolution, was, according to legend, first
practised in 1823 at the private boarding school 'Rugby School' in the town of Rugby (Warwickshire). In 1845, the first
sporting rules were written down by students there. From Rugby, the sport spread not only to public schools in England, but
further afield in the British Empire. In 1895, clubs from working‐class areas in the north of England left the Rugby
Football Union and founded an association that has been called the Rugby Football League since 1922 and plays according to
different rules with 13 players each (also widespread in Australia, apart from the area of origin in the north of England).
15‐a‐side rugby was an Olympic discipline in 1900, 1908, 1920 and 1924; since 2016, 7‐a‐side rugby,
played according to the classic Rugby Union rules, has been part of the Olympic programme. World 15s Rugby Championships
have been held every four years since 1987 ‐ this year from the 8th of September to the 28th of October.
After 2007, France will host for the second time in 2023. Coin designer Joaquin Jimenez has depicted a stylised
rugby player in full run, with a ball in his hands. The field of play appears like the cap of a globe represented by
circles of longitude and latitude, delimited by the two goals formed by two tall vertical poles and a cross pole
each. The background is a firmament of radiating dots and two rugby‐shaped planets, one of them surrounded by rings
like Saturn. At the top, the occasion of issue is written in a semicircle ‐ as well as in three lines at the bottom
left (below the logo of the event) ‐ "COUPE DU MONDE RUGBY FRANCE 2023" (Rugby World Cup France 2023). On the bottom
right is the country abbreviation "RF" (République française, French Republic), flanked on the left by a
cornucopia the mint mark of the French mint Monnaie de Paris in Plessac and on the right by the logo of the designer.
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