Rugby union is played in over 100 countries across six continents and as of November 2010 118 unions were members of the IRB.

Five Hall of Fame inductees, including the first New Zealander named to the IRB Hall of Fame, played during the 1960s.

( Hobson was also an IRB member, but had a falling out with the leadership after he supported Redmond's appointees to the provisional council, and hence played little role in the IRB thereafter.

Members of the Clan and of the IRB who supported Indian nationalists, and who played a role in the Hindu German Conspiracy, included John Devoy, Joseph McGarrity, Roger Casement and Éamon de Valera.

He also played for IRB Maghnia.

Rugby sevens is sanctioned by the IRB, and is played under substantially the same laws and on a field of the same dimensions as the 15-player game.

( In the IRB Sevens World Series, only the Cup final, which determines the overall winner of an event, is played with 10-minute halves ; all finals for lower-level trophies are played with 7-minute halves.

In 2011, Japan displayed the extent of its progress in the sport by winning the 2011 IRB Pacific Nations Cup, played against Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.

He played on the 1997 and 2001 Lions tours, and was the inaugural winner of the IRB World Player of the Year award in 2001.

The IRB Rugby Aid Match was played on 5 March 2005 under the auspices of the International Rugby Board ( IRB ) to raise money for the United Nations World Food Programme to support its work aiding victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

He used to play rugby in Japan for Toshiba Brave Lupus in the Top League and has also played for the Japan national rugby union team under the IRB three year residence qualification.

Even by this time however, the rules being played in Canada were vastly different from the rules used in countries that were part of the International Rugby Board ( IRB ).

On June 4, 2006, a rugby game was played at Honjo Stadium between Japan and Tonga as part of the inaugural IRB Pacific 5 Nations series.

The IRB Rugby Aid Match was a rugby union football match played on 5 March 2005 under the auspices of the International Rugby Board to raise money for the United Nations World Food Programme to support its work aiding victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

As well as representing the England Under-21s he played for the North of England and England Students, while in the 1999-00 season he played for the England Sevens on the IRB Sevens circuit, including in the Hong Kong Sevens.

He started in the first of two IRB sanctioned tests played against South Africa to celebrate the centenary of the South African Rugby Board ( SARB ), a 20-19 defeat for the tourists at Newlands on 26 August 1989.

In 2003 – 04 he played in six of the IRB World Series rounds including the three wins in South Africa, Hong Kong and London.

For the next 20 years, the IRB ceased to be an important force in Irish politics, leaving Parnell and his party the leaders of the nationalist movement in Ireland.

More important within the context of the IRB Sevens as a whole, the Cup and Plate are now contested in the same manner as in other competitions, with the losing quarter-finalists in the Cup parachuting into the Plate semifinals.

This reorganization put the IRB is a stronger position, as four important military positions ( director of training, director of military organization, director of military operations, and director of communications ) were held by men who were, or would soon be, members of the IRB, and who later become four of the seven signatories of the Easter Proclamation.

Casement's role as emissary was self-appointed, and, as he was not a member of the IRB, that organisation's leadership wished to have one of their own contact Germany to negotiate German aid for an uprising the following year.

Before long, Clarke was playing a central role in local IRB activities.

McCullough was elected to fill the vacant seat of the President of the IRB late in 1915, a position he held during the Easter Rising of 1916, though he took no active role in the rising itself.

Though he had been one of the most active members of the IRB for years, and was instrumental in the founding of the Volunteers, Hobson took no major role in politics ( though he was later an occasional adviser to Clann na Poblachta ) after the Rising, or the subsequent Anglo-Irish War.

In honour of the role of Melrose RFC in the creation of rugby sevens, the club was inducted along with Haig to the IRB Hall of Fame in 2008.

On 24 October 2011, at the IRB Awards ceremony in Auckland, Pichot was inducted into the IRB Hall of Fame alongside 18 other key figures in the history of the Rugby World Cup.

Jock is the longest serving Chairman in NZRU history and his service to the game was recognised at the 2011 IRB and Steinlager Rugby awards where he received the Vernon Pugh award for Distinguished service and the Steinlager Salver award respectively.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood ( IRB ) saw an opportunity to create an armed organisation to advance its own ends, and on 25 November 1913 the Irish Volunteers, whose stated object was " to secure and to maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland ", was formed.

Whereas MacNeill intended to use force only to resist the imposition of conscription on Ireland, or to prevent the use of force to disarm of the Volunteers, the IRB men intended to launch an armed rebellion in pursuit of Irish independence.

Parnell made it his business to cultivate Fenian sentiments both in Britain and Ireland and became associated with the more radical wing of the Home Rule League, which included Joseph Biggar ( MP for Cavan from 1874 ), John O ' Connor Power ( MP for County Mayo from 1874 ) ( both, although constitutionalists, had links with the IRB ), Edmund Dwyer-Gray ( MP for Tipperary from 1877 ), and Frank Hugh O ' Donnell ( MP for Dungarvan from 1877 ).

Parnell next became the centre of public attention when in March and April 1887 he found himself accused by the British newspaper The Times of supporting the brutal murders in May 1882 of the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish and the Permanent Under-Secretary, Thomas Henry Burke in Dublin's Phoenix Park, and of the general involvement of his movement with crime ( i. e., with illegal organisations such as the IRB ).

This is the largest artificial grass development in Ireland to date designed to IRB, GAA and FIFA specifications.

The Heineken Cup ( known as the H Cup in France due to restrictions on alcohol sponsorship ) is one of two annual rugby union competitions organised by European Rugby Cup involving leading club, regional and provincial teams from the six International Rugby Board ( IRB ) countries in Europe whose national teams compete in the Six Nations Championship: England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales.

In Ireland itself, the IRB tried an armed revolt in 1867 but, as it was heavily infiltrated by police informers, the rising was a failure.

Though the " rights and liberties " were never defined, nor the means by which they would be obtained, the IRB in the Fenian tradition construed the term to mean the maintenance of the rights of Ireland to national independence and to secure that right in arms.

Parnell worked untiringly between Ireland and Britain making speeches for support which he actually got from the ( IRB ) Fenians who rallied to him.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood ( IRB ) was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an " independent democratic republic " in Ireland during the second half of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century.

In 1882, a breakaway IRB faction calling itself the Irish National Invincibles assassinated the British Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish and his secretary, in an incident known as the Phoenix Park Murders.

Nonetheless, the Boks were named IRB International Team of the Year, beating out Six Nations Grand Slam winners Ireland.

The IRB was a secret oath-bound society committed to ridding Ireland of English rule and establishing an Irish Republic through physical force.

This followed a series of failed uprisings in Ireland, and marked a change of tactics as the IRB and Clan na Gael decided to strike at the heart of the British Empire, embarking on a campaign designed to put the issue of Ireland at the forefront of British politics.

The IRB was essentially being refounded in Ireland, predominantly by Bulmer Hobson, Denis McCullough, Pat McCartan, and rising figures like Seán Mac Diarmada.

Devoy sent Clarke back to Ireland to head up the American interest in the IRB revival.

The Fenian movement consisted of the Fenian Brotherhood and the Irish Republican Brotherhood ( IRB ), fraternal organisations founded in the United States and Ireland respectively with the aim of establishing an independent republic in Ireland.

Eight former Ireland players have earned induction into the International Rugby Hall of Fame, with five of them also having earned induction into the IRB Hall of Fame.

Keith Wood, O ' Driscoll's predecessor as Ireland captain before retiring in 2003, was the inaugural IRB International Player of the Year in 2001.

That win propelled Ireland to a best ever height of 3rd in the IRB World Rankings.

Former Ireland rugby international captain Keith Wood, also the inaugural IRB International Player of the Year in 2001, is a Killaloe native.