{"id":263059,"date":"2025-11-14T20:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T20:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/263059\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T20:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T20:37:08","slug":"rugby-union-what-are-the-raeburn-and-utrecht-shields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/263059\/","title":{"rendered":"Rugby Union: What are the Raeburn and Utrecht Shields?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rugby fan Dave Algie is the creator of the Raeburn and Utrecht Shields and had the idea for the trophies in 2008.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We were talking online, running through results and thinking, what if Test rugby worked like boxing? What if there was a title that passed from team to team?&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He then devised the winner-stays-on Shields, which he describes as &#8220;two unofficial, fan-driven rugby titles that quietly stitch together every Test match ever played&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dave says the trophies provide an opportunity for underdog nations to obtain them and provide an extra competitive layer to matches when title holders are playing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The history already existed in the results. We did not invent anything. We just finally paid attention to it,&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There is a physical version of the Utrecht Shield for the holders to retain, with a Raeburn Shield currently under construction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rugby fan Dave Algie is the creator of the Raeburn and Utrecht Shields and had the idea for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-263059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}