Birmingham Vulcans are Alabama State Rugby Champions 4th year in a row!!

This weekend the Birmingham Vulcans won the Alabama State Rugby Championship (a.k.a. Gene Higgins Memorial Cup) for the 4th year in a row!! Vulcan is the Roman name of Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths, artisans, fire and more. Due to the importance of the steel industry in Birmingham, in 1904 the locals built a statue of Vulcan in the city, and at 56 ft tall (17 meters), it is still the largest cast iron statue in the world. And that is how the local rugby team got its name.

Vulcan is so well known in Alabama that even the yearly NASCAR race in Talladega gives the winner a miniature copy of Vulcan’s statue. Visit our page about Hephaestus to learn more about him, or you can find out all about the history of the statue of Vulcan from the YouTube documentary series made by Vulcan Park & Museum: