Rugby's Strangest Matches

INTRODUCTION

Rugby’s Strangest Matches describes some of the game’s most curious occasions of the past 145 years. Any unusual team or individual performance, or any occurrence during or surrounding a match that was a clear departure from the normal run of things, has been regarded as strange and thus worthy of inclusion.

This collection of true stories includes the match when an Irish international player arranged his marriage in order to qualify for leave of absence to play against England, the occasion when a team of top English soccer players beat their rugby counterparts at the 15-a-side game, the game where an almost complete unknown played for his country due to an administrative mistake, and the match where a well-known referee was sent off.

Naturally, ‘strangeness’ is subjective depending on the circumstances at the time and one’s own point of view. Therefore there may well be some argument relating to what has been included and what has been left out. For the most part, the stories concentrate on the games played at senior international level because these attracted more attention and wider media coverage. No doubt there are many others, which would qualify for inclusion, but for which there are no reported accounts.

The majority of the work is based on newspaper research and personal memories. My first debt of gratitude is therefore to the recorders of the game, past and present, for setting down what otherwise would have been lost for all time. In particular, the personal recollections and lighter asides, in word and in print, of Viv Jenkins, Frank Keating, Ian Malin, David Hands, John Mason, Steve Jones, Rob Wildman, Brendan Gallagher, Patrick Lennon and Mick Cleary have helped to illuminate many of the stories appearing in this collection.

Elsewhere, behind the scenes, I owe a debt of gratitude to three old friends, Tim Auty of Leeds, Geoff Miller in New Zealand and Tony Lewis of Pyle in South Wales for suggesting ideas and forwarding copies of cuttings from their own archives. Finally, thanks go to Jeremy Robson for commissioning the original edition, and to Lorna Russell at Robson Books and more recently Nicola Newman and Katie Hewett at Pavilion for their skilful and patient management of the project.

John Griffiths

DR ALMOND’S WORDS OF WISDOM

EDINBURGH, MARCH 1871

Rugby union’s first international was always going to be a strange match. The background to the occasion gives some insight into the unusual circumstances surrounding international sport nearly 130 years ago.

There had been a soccer international between England and a ‘Scotland XI’ in November 1870. England’s win by a goal to nil angered those north of the Border, where it was contended that the only connection the losers had with ‘their’ country was a liking for Scotch whisky. The Scots asserted that the principal version of football played at their schools and universities was rugby and they issued a challenge to England to pick a side for an international rugby match to be staged at Raeburn Place, Edinburgh, in March 1871.

The English accepted and their selected 20 (13 forwards and seven backs) got down to earnest preparations for the big match. Typical of the training undertaken by their players was the regimen of one John Henry Clayton, a forward from the Liverpool club. Weighing in at more than 17st (108kg), his training makes fascinating reading. For a month before the match he ran 4 miles (6.4km) every morning, his large Newfoundland dog ‘making the pace’. A 4-mile (6.4-km) horseback ride took him to his Liverpool office where he put in a 12-hour day, 8a.m. to 8p.m., before making the return journey home to a dinner of underdone-beef-and-beer. He laid claim to a ‘frugal and strenuous life otherwise’.

Travelling arrangements were in stark contrast to those of today. England travelled north on Saturday night (for the Monday match) in third-class rail carriages with bare board seats. Arriving at dawn next day, they took baths before finding accommodation. All travelling and hotel expenses were met by the players themselves.

The next day dawned bright and clear and more than 2,000 spectators arrived to see Scotland win on a pitch that was judged narrow compared with English standards. The game was largely a protracted maul – imagine rugby today being played among 40 men, most of them forwards – and several of the laws peculiar to the Scottish version of rugby were adopted. England, in short, were clearly playing against the odds. Even so, in the two halves of 50 minutes each, their backs impressed Scottish observers with their willingness to run with the ball.

Scoring by points was not introduced to rugby football until the late 1880s and at the time of this inaugural international the only way a match could be won was by a majority of goals: drop goals or converted tries. (Penalty goals would not sully rugby’s scoring until more than 20 years later.) Tries alone were of no value. They simply enabled sides to ‘try’ for a goal.

Scotland scored the only goal of the match early in the second half. They succeeded in pushing a scrummage over the England goal line and to Angus Buchanan, who grounded the ball, fell the distinction of scoring the first try in international rugby. But not before England had disputed its legality.

A lengthy and by all accounts heated debate ensued before the try was allowed to stand. Referees did not appear in matches until the mid-1870s so appeals were heard by umpires (later known as touch judges). The umpire who awarded the try, which was converted into a goal by William Cross with a fine kick, was Scotland’s Dr Almond, the well-known headmaster of Loretto.

The wisdom behind his allowing the score was later set in print: ‘Let me make a confession,’ he wrote. ‘I do not know whether the decision which gave Scotland the try from which the winning goal was kicked was correct in fact. When an umpire is in doubt, I think he is justified in deciding against the side which makes most noise. They are probably in the wrong.’ Both sides added later tries but in the absence of successful conversions, Scotland held their controversial lead. Accounts of the match refer to their superior fitness so it seems reasonable to assume that the better side won.

IRISH CHAOS

THE OVAL, FEBRUARY 1875

Ireland’s entry into international rugby in 1875 was surrounded by chaos. The Irish Football Union was formed in November the previous year but, much to the annoyance of the Belfast rugby clubs, none of their representatives were present. That same month in Belfast, a representative Dublin club rugby XV played their Belfast counterparts in a forerunner of what is now the Leinster–Ulster inter-provincial matches. There was great interest in the match, as it was perceived as a trial for the forthcoming international against England.

The Belfast men triumphed in difficult conditions and then proceeded to give the vanquished a wigging. The Ulstermen underlined their annoyance at not having been invited to the formation of the Union by proceeding to form their own North of Ireland Union in direct opposition to the Dubliners.

However, with the fixture against England in London looming, the two parties eventually reached a compromise. It was diplomatically decided that both should nominate ten players to the team of 20. But not much thought went into the selection process.

There was no communication between the two unions about the positions players would occupy. Indeed, many of them had never seen one another before. As a result, there was chaos. Backs were made to play in forward positions and vice-versa. Two of those chosen to play did not even appear and it was no surprise that Ireland were penned deep in their own half for the entire match.

The trenchant Irish critic of the day, Jacques MacCarthy, wrote: ‘The whole lot were immaculately innocent of training.’ They were also unfit and, it was reckoned, would have been well beaten by a fourth-rate London club. In fairness, it should be pointed out that rugby in Ireland in the 1870s was played by teams of 15-a-side and the Irish forwards who met England at the Oval were far too light and inexperienced to play effectively at the long-drawn-out mauling game that was a feature of 20-a-side rugby.

Ireland were also found wanting in the drop-kicking department. The technique was virtually unknown in their club circles and when Richard Walkington, their full-back, was entrusted with a drop-out he was unable to propel the ball farther than 10 yards (9.1m).

Even so, despite their inadequacies, Ireland only went down by a goal, a dropped goal and a try to nil. That, however, did not prevent the football correspondent of the Field from declaring: ‘I could whip up 20 Irishmen resident in London who would make hares of this pseudo-Irish 20.’

THE FIRST XVs

THE OVAL, FEBRUARY 1877

Those who turned up to see the international match between England and Ireland in 1877 would have regarded the events of the next 80 minutes as quite unusual.

Up to this time, internationals had been played between teams of 20 players a side, normally lined out with three full-backs, a solitary three-quarter back, three half-backs and 13 forwards. Most of the time the ball was lost in scrums and mauls comprising 26 forwards. Backs would have been very lucky to get their hands on the ball and attacking movements among them were virtually non-existent.

On the rare occasions when a player was able to make a run with the ball, one of the vast number of opponents invariably collared him. The laws of the game at the time required a player so held to call ‘Down’. That was the signal for the two packs to gather around the player, who then placed the ball on the floor. A scrum then formed around the ball and the object was for one set of forwards to try to drive it through and break away down field, usually with a dribble.

Such scrums were protracted affairs because there was no heeling or wheeling. Sides coming away with the ball left opponents lying on the ground in their wake. Brawn rather than brain was the order of the day.

Mindful that the rugby held little spectacle for anybody other than those who had played it, the law-making authorities began experimenting with ways to speed up the game. In 1875, Oxford and Cambridge pioneered the 15-a-side game and 15 months later the reduced number was first adopted for international matches when England hosted Ireland at Kennington Oval, home of the Surrey Cricket Club.

‘The ball naturally made its appearance sooner from the diminished number of forwards, though the scrummages were still of formidable length owing to the methods then employed,’ it was noted, after England had beaten the Irish by two goals and two tries to nil.

The England team was a light combination, selected, perhaps, with the 15-a-side occasion in mind. They were nimbler to the ball than their rivals and, observed the rugby correspondent of The Times, ‘knew more of the science of the game.’ The match was the first in which Albert Hornby, the Lancashire Test cricketer, appeared in an England rugby jersey. Aged nearly 30, he was the first rugby player to make use of the punt as a device for gaining ground. His kicks were an innovation as far as international rugby was concerned at the time and his effective methods attracted considerable comment. Hornby had attended Harrow School where, it was reported, the football game practised in his day was quite different from the version at Rugby School. The original Harrow game did not admit drop-kicking; indeed, the shape of the football was unsuited to such kicking. In its place, Hornby had developed the technique of punting and it was this kicking style which made him conspicuous throughout the match.

For the spectator in 1877, then, international rugby must have appeared to be a whole new ball game, with that year’s England–Ireland fixture clearly marking the beginning of its modern version.

AND THERE WAS LIGHT

BROUGHTON, OCTOBER 1878

In the late 1870s bids were mounted by the fledgling electrical light companies to overturn the monopoly the gas companies held over urban street lighting. As Thomas Edison, in the United States, and Sir Joseph Swan, in Britain, perfected the design of the incandescent light bulb, less inspired experimenters were already using more primitive forms of electrical lighting.

Sport was an interested beneficiary of the new form of lighting with both football and rugby pioneering floodlit events in the winter of 1878–9. The first recorded rugby match under floodlights took place in the industrial north when Broughton entertained Swinton on 22 October, 1878. Two Gramme’s Lights suspended from 30-ft (9.1-m) poles were used for illumination. Another match was staged in the Liverpool area the same month and the craze for ‘illuminated matches’ spread like wildfire as the electrical companies sought to promote their methods.

An interesting additional development in November was the use of a white ball for a match staged at Old Deer Park involving Surrey and Middlesex. Surrey won a match enlightened by four lamps driven by a couple of Siemens electro-dynamo machines.

Three months later on 24 February, 1879, the first floodlit game in Scotland took place at Hawick. Their local derby with Melrose, whom they defeated by a goal to nil, attracted a healthy crowd of 5,000 and a gate of £63. (It would have been much greater but for the fact that only one gate man was on duty and many poured through a hole in a perimeter fence without paying.) The power for the light came from two dynamos driven by steam engines, but the crowd had a shock when the parsimonious officials switched the power off immediately the match finished. Heavy snow had covered the pitch and surrounds and there was chaos as spectators skidded their way home in complete darkness.

Floodlit rugby for gate-money was actually prohibited by the Rugby Football Union ‘as not in the interests of the game’ in 1933. By the 1950s, however, Harlequins and Cardiff were staging a popular sequence of annual evening matches at the White City (before the Quins set up home at the Stoop) and there was a successful Floodlit Alliance series involving the major Welsh clubs in the 1960s.

Nowadays major internationals in the southern hemisphere are frequently staged as night games and the official world record attendance for a rugby union match was set when Australia played the All Blacks under the lights of the Olympic Stadium, Sydney, in July 2000. A crowd of 109,874 turned out to see the New Zealanders win a pulsating match 39–35.

LUCKY TO GET NIL

BLACKHEATH, FEBRUARY 1881

When the successful Welsh sides of the late 1960s and 1970s regularly beat England, and quite often by large scores, the joke in Wales was that the fixture would be dropped the next season – the implication being that England were unworthy of a full international match with mighty Wales.

Perhaps the Welsh were trying to get their own back for a slight against them by England nearly a hundred years earlier, when the sides first met in 1881 in one of the oddest matches ever involving Wales. It was a game that marked their entry into international rugby and took place before even the Welsh Rugby Union itself had been founded.

The man known as the ‘father of Welsh Rugby’, Richard Mullock, was the inspiration behind their maiden international. A mover and shaker of the South Wales Football Union, Mullock wrote to the Rugby Football Union in London early in the 1880–81 season, proposing an international rugby match with England. The English accepted the challenge and arranged a fixture for 19 February 1881 at Richardson’s Field, Blackheath, which was then home to the famous Blackheath club.

If enterprise was one of Mr Mullock’s strengths, organisation certainly wasn’t. No trial match was staged and players were eventually chosen for the match by virtue of reputation. One of the last survivors of that Welsh side was Major Richard Summers of Haverfordwest. In an interview many years later he recalled that he was informally asked to play on the strength of his performances a couple of years earlier for his school, Cheltenham College, in matches against Cardiff and Newport. No formal invitations to play were sent out to the Welsh XV. Two did not turn up because they had not received instructions to attend and two bystanders, University undergraduates with tenuous Welsh links but who had travelled to London to see the match, had to be roped in to play for their country.

Mullock, however, did have the inspiration of clothing his side in scarlet jerseys and chose the Prince of Wales feathers as the emblem. Researchers have never uncovered his reasons for veering away from the black shirts with white leek that identified the uniform of the South Wales Football Club, the prototypes of representative Welsh rugby.

The Blackheath club used a local hostelry on the heath (the Princess of Wales, which remains a popular pub to this day)