A local tradition of over 1,000 years and again which historians believe inspired modern day rugby is being marked this afternoon at Easter Monday clash at Hallaton.
‘We believe bottle kicking is the origins of rugby. Why do we say that? In 1844 the Rector of Hallaton was the Reverend Dennis and his nephew came to stay with him during the Easter school holidays, he saw the bottle kicking going on. If you think of it, it's a giant rugby spun for want of a better word, and people running with it and the barrel shaped a little bit like a rugby ball. He saw all this. He went back to his school at Rugby and picked up the football and ran with it’.
That was chairman, Phil Allen. The annual bottle kicking sees the village take on Medbourne to get three barrels over Hare Pie Bank into their own village by any means possible in a scrum of locals. Hallaton this year are defending their title.
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