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DID YOU KNOW

The cup is made of melted down silver rupees withdrawn from the balance of the Calcutta Club bank account before it was closed.

There are 2 kinds of animals on the Cup - Cobra (3 of them) and an elephant

The base of the cup records the dates of each match played along with who won the particular match - including matches played before the cup even existed!

The Calcutta Cup was kicked around like a football by 2 very drunk ruggers. Needless to say, it was very badly damaged!

The Calcutta Cup has been contested 124 times since 1879 - now since it is an annual competition why doesn’t it add up though?: This is because the competitions were suspended between 1915-19 and 1940-1946 due to WW1 and WW2

Of the 124 matches, England has won 71 times, Scotland, 39 and the remaining 14 were draws

There is a fake! (TWO of them to be precise!) - or more officially speaking, replicas used for competitions and tours to preserve the original.

Technically the “first” game played didn’t even take place in Britain

The name of the cup is part of an effort to preserve the name of the club it was named after (take a moment to digest that)

The matches take place in Murrayfield Stadium in Scotland on even years and Twickenham Stadium on odd years

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The Calcutta Cup

The cup may have been created in 1879 but it’s story dates back years beyond that, back to Christmas day of 1872 in India where the first game between England vs. Scotland, Ireland and Wales was played in Calcutta. The game was such a success that it was repeated a week later.

Rugby started gaining popularity in India and the Calcutta (Rugby) Football Club was formed in January 1873 by the students of the former Rugby School, or old Rugbeians as they were called, and the emigres ensconced in Calcutta. By 1874, the club had joined the Rugby Football Union – the body that governs English Rugby.

The club had a prosperous start with 137 members, rather interesting fixtures (such as Calcutta F.C. v. The Military, Public Schools v. The Rest, Merchants and Brokers v. The Rest etc.) and a free bar to top it off.  However, the club disbanded after just 5 years. This was due to several reasons, apparently not due to the lack of funds per se but particularly due to the club’s significant drop in membership after the free bar closed and the unfavourable Indian climate making way for other sports more suited for the climates such as polo, cricket and tennis. Furthermore, the departure of the British army regiment contributed to the demise of the club as well.

Though the Calcutta (Rugby) Football Club was no more, its founders and members wished to keep its memory alive. Several ideas were put forth such as a gymkhana (a sports day of sorts), a ball or a dinner. However these ideas were later deemed to be transient and by no means as memorable as having the 270 silver rupees that remained in the club’s bank account melted down to be made into a trophy – the Calcutta Cup. This unique and intricately crafted trophy was then presented to the Rugby Football Union (RFU) with the provision that it should be competed for on an annual basis – or in their words “the best means of doing some lasting good for the cause of Rugby Football”.

Initially the Calcutta Cup was proposed to be used as an annual prize for ‘knockoff-style’ club competitions, analogous to the FA Cup of Football. However, the Rugby Football Union decided to keep the competition at an international level to retain the

In terms of its appearance, the trophy itself is approximately 45 centimetres in height, with the silver delicately etched of and decorated with three king cobras that form the handles and an elephant sitting atop the lid – testament of its ornate Indian workmanship. It rests on a wooden base on which hold the dates of each match played (dating from up to 8 years before the cup came into being!), the winning country and the names of the team captains of both teams.

Almost 30 years ago, the Calcutta Cup unfortunately was very notoriously and severely damaged. After a relatively bad game of Rugby played at Murrayfield Stadium in 1988, tensions were pretty high at the after-match dinner and two players, England’s No. 8, Dean Richards and Scotland’s flanker, John Jeffrey went on a drunken rampage around the streets of Edinburgh. From pouring champagne into the over hundred-year-old cup to kicking it around like it was a ball. It ended up the next morning, in a gutter on with a distorted top and all three of the cobra tails crushed Princes Street. Rather amusingly  enough, a doorman at a nightclub attempted to straighten the Cup using a broom handle which instead damaged it further. Though there was no real malicious intent, the two players were reprimanded and punished for their actions. The cup was thereby sent for repair that amounted to about £1,500.

Currently, the cup is contested during the annual Six Nations match between England and Scotland. While there are other Six Nation trophies that are unique to those contesting them, such as the Millennium Trophy awarded to the winner of the match between England v. Ireland or the Centenary Quaich which is awarded to the winner of the game between Ireland and Scotland, the Calcutta cup distinguishes itself from the rest by being contested predating the Six Nations competition itself (of Home Nations as it was formerly known).

All in all, the Calcutta Cup is an irreplaceable trophy with a rich history and a value that transcends simply the winning the matches; a testament of the voyage the game of Rugby had made through to India and back again through English and Scottish History.

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Please click on the photos to view the captions :)