• RugbyX laws designed to encourage fast, simple and skilful gameplay whilst retaining the game’s core fundamentals
  • World Rugby EXCO has Sanctioned RugbyX as a law trial following extensive testing
  • Inaugural RugbyX event will take place on October 29th 2019 featuring the leading male and female international sevens teams
  • Tickets are available for afternoon (15:30 – 18:00) and evening (20:30 – 23:00) sessions via Ticketmaster and AXS

World Rugby today confirmed details of the laws under which the inaugural RugbyX tournament will take place at the O2 Arena, London on 29 October, 2019. This event, which is currently targeted at international rugby players, has been sanctioned to take place in England by the Rugby Football Union (RFU).

Following a highly-successful test event at the O2 Arena, where the first ever temporary installation of a World Rugby Regulation 22 compliant artificial pitch in an indoor arena was undertaken, the package of modified laws were approved World Rugby’s Executive Committee and RFU Governance Committee (as host union) for a dedicated RugbyX trial:

  • Matches will take place over 10 minutes with no half-time. Full contact rugby on a half-sized pitch
  • Five players per side plus seven rolling substitutes
  • Quick throws replace line outs
  • No touch kicking – tap penalties/free kicks
  • Kick-offs replaced by tap restarts on 5m line
  • Kicking allowed up to a maximum height of 10m, to be monitored by Sportable ball tracking technology
  • Drawn matches settled by ‘one on one’

The 'one on one' will see one attacking player from Team A receive the ball 30m from the opposition goal line, with one defender from Team B on his/her defensive 5m line. If Team A scores, and Team B fails to score, Team A wins the match and vice versa.

The inaugural RugbyX tournament is being organised by commercial rights agency TRM and will feature men’s and women’s competitions happening in parallel over two sessions, each 2.5 hours in duration, enabling fans to see some of the world’s best players. Competing teams come from the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series - England, Ireland, France, USA and Argentina and will be joined by Barbarians FC.

Technical Director for RugbyX and Fiji’s former Olympic gold medal winning coach, Ben Ryan, said: “The RugbyX laws have been developed with the objective of encouraging simple, fast and skilful gameplay with minimal stoppages, whilst retaining the core fundamentals of the game we love. We look forward to the first ever showcase of RugbyX at the O2 Arena, the World’s number one entertainment destination.”

World Rugby CEO, Brett Gosper, said: “The sanctioning of RugbyX marks an exciting step on World Rugby’s journey towards making the sport more accessible, providing an important entry point for new audiences to experience the joy, speed and skill of rugby in an indoor arena environment.

“Innovation is crucial to the continuing success of any sport and RugbyX presents a great opportunity to capitalise on increasing global interest in the days immediately preceding the Rugby World Cup 2019 final in Japan.”