{"id":571006,"date":"2025-11-15T01:18:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T01:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/571006\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T01:18:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T01:18:15","slug":"rugby-union-what-are-the-raeburn-and-utrecht-shields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/571006\/","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":571007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-571006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115551083225020331","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}