Durham University RFC
rugby team
The Durham University Rugby Football Club (Durham University RFC or DURFC) is the rugby union club of the University of Durham. They play in BUCS Super Rugby, the highest level student rugby competition in the UK, and have produced a number of notable international rugby players.
History
One of the earliest recorded matches was against Durham School, on 2 November 1875. The school won by "one goal, one try and two touch-downs to three touch-downs". Other fixtures for Michaelmas term 1875 included vs Houghton-le-Spring in Houghton on 6 November, vs Durham City in Durham on 13 November, vs South Shields in South Shields on 20 November, the return match vs Durham School in Durham on 25 November, vs Sunderland in Durham on 27 November, the return match vs Durham City on 2 December, vs Northumberland in Newcastle on 4 December, and the return match vs Houghton-le-Spring in Durham on 11 December.
Ted Wood previously served as director of rugby.
Durham won the UAU Championship (precursor to BUCS), in 1951, 1955, 1965, 1969, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1987, 2004, 2011, 2012, 2013.
Durham were crowned BUCS Super Rugby champions for the 2019–20 season under captain Ben Fowles, the Covid-19 pandemic stopped the team from going to challenge for the BUCS Super Rugby Cup Final.
Following the cancelled Covid-19 season, Durham again won the BUCS Super Rugby league title for the 2021–22 season under captain Fred Davies.
The 150th anniversary in 2025 saw celebratory matches on 3 May with a DUWRFC Past and Present team taking on a North East Women's Select team and the men's 1st team becoming only the fifth university side (the fourth from a UK university) to play against the Barbarians.
“Durham University RFC” enters the record as rugby team. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Durham, University and rugby can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Durham University RFC” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Durham, University and rugby provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55137026. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1875, 1951, 1955 and 1965.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Durham University RFC” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.