The sport was brought to the country by British soldiers during the
Mandate era, but petered out after the British left. A wave of immigration from English-speaking countries since 1967 has seen renewed interest in the sport, particularly in areas with large English-speaking populations such as
Ra'anana and
Jerusalem. A national league was set up in 1972, and the Israel Rugby Union (now Rugby Israel) formed in 1975. Israel's first international match was away to
Switzerland on 25 May 1981, and ended 9–9. The Union joined the
International Rugby Board in 1988, and participated in the
European section of the
qualifying rounds for the
1991 Rugby World Cup. In a group with
Denmark,
Sweden and Switzerland, Israel lost all three matches, but were by no means humiliated. In the
qualifying matches for the
1995 World Cup, Israel thrashed
Hungary 67–8 in the preliminary round, before being knocked out in the Round 1 group stage, failing to score a point in two of their three games. The
qualifying matches for the
1999 Rugby World Cup followed the established pattern, with Israel being knocked out in the group stage, though they avoided finishing bottom of their five-team group by beating
Austria. The same happened in the
2003 WC qualifiers, where they finished fourth in a six team group. In the
2007 WC qualifiers they did not even make it to the group stage, being thrashed 113–7 on aggregate (0–53, 60–7) by
Lithuania. Israel beat
Slovenia by 26–19 at 11 May 2009, but lost to
Lithuania by 3–19 at 23 May 2009, ending their campaign for the
2011 Rugby World Cup qualifyings. These were the first ever games of Israel to be televised. In the
2015 Rugby World Cup qualifyings, Israel won Division 2B of
Europe qualification, defeating all opponents and being promoted to the play-off round. ==Record==