The William Webb Ellis Trophy has replaced the King’s Cup of 1919. Rugby’s creation myth of a day in 1823 where one schoolboy ran with the ball may be highly suspect. But it is time again to proceed with a ‘fine disregard for the rules of football’ and assert ‘the distinctive feature of the rugby game’. Perhaps also in this year of all years, it is time to sing it out loud. In 1991, rugby’s World Cup adopted as its anthem Gustav Holst’s setting of diplomat Sir Cecil Spring-Rice’s 1908 poem ‘I vow to thee my country’. He had rewritten his own words in 1918, in response to wartime losses:
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
On the thin ice of political correctness, such heavy and unfashionable concepts as patriotism and religion have been questioned; we have only doubts where once there were certainties. Which is the better age? Discuss. The lyrics of ‘World in Union’ do not compare with the stirring original. In the 1915 centenary of the deaths of Ronald Poulton-Palmer, Basil Maclear, Freddy Turner, Ted Larkin, Doolan Downing, Pierre Guillemin, Owen Sawers, Billy Geen and thousands more too painful to count, is it not time to remember their ‘final sacrifice’?
If rugby and war now share not only a common lexicon but a soundtrack too, this is a time for celebration of rugby values and commemoration of the men who held them dear. But let us also keep a proper perspective. An experience in the second war haunted ‘voice of rugby’ Bill McLaren: a grisly mound of mutilated corpses, victims of a massacre, unburied in an Italian churchyard. The sight changed his life at 21 and moulded his view on sport. Rugby was in his blood, he explained, ‘but in the great scheme of things it really doesn’t matter’. As our French Army officer said, ‘Rugby and warfare share a common language, but we must remember they are very different’.
We must remember.
Notes
1 Theoden of Rohan, The Two Towers, Lord of the Rings (New Line Cinema, 2002).
2 Histories, Book 1.
3 Sir Oliver Lodge, Raymond, or Life and Death (Methuen, 1916).
4 His letters and diary until 29 June 1916 survived. His story is told in The Final Whistle.
5 A more Nietzschean version is used – ‘Character is Destiny’ – although the original was just within CWGC stipulations.
6 Daily Express, 27 March 2014.
7 A.P. Herbert, ‘Beaucourt Revisited’.
8 General Charles Harington, Plumer of Messines (John Murray, 1935).
9 Phil Gifford, Loyal: The Todd Blackadder Story (Hodder Moa Beckett, 2001).
10 Exeter Express and Echo, 4 November 2014.
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Plates
1. ‘Forever England’. The last pre-war England XV in April 1914 at Colombes, remembered in a commemorative painting by Shane Record, commissioned by the RFU. Six players who died have their red roses ‘greyed’, from back row left: Arthur Harrison VC, Robert Pillman, Jimmy Dingle, James Watson, Ronald Poulton-Palmer, Francis Oakeley. Only Bruno Brown (right of R.P.P.) would play in the King’s Cup in 1919. (RFU and Shane Record)
2. The silver ACME Thunderer presented to referee Gil Evans in 1908, which has whistled the start of every modern Rugby World Cup. (New Zealand Rugby Museum)
Names in bold in picture captions indicate players who lost their lives during the war.
3. The French team of April 1914: back row L to R: Jean-Louis Capmau, Jean-Jacques Conilh de Beyssac, Fernand Forgues, Paul Fauré; middle: Marcel-Frédéric Lubin-Lebrère, Robert Lacoste, Gilbert Pierrot, Maurice Leuvielle, Lucien Besset, Paulin Bascou, Emmanuel Iguiñiz, Geo Andre; front: Jean Larribau, Jean Caujolle, Marcel Burgun. (Frédéric Humbert)
4. Recruiting poster from early 1915: 26 England internationals would die and a 27th, Reggie Schwartz, succumbed to flu in late 1918. (Library of Congress)
5. This hard-hitting poster reveals the bitterness felt at football’s continued season; both players and crowds are caught in the same resentful stare. (Library of Congress)
6. 8th Cameronians (The Scottish Rifles), all former Glasgow Academy boys. Eight men here, including Accies rugby players Templeton, Stout, Church and Young would die on the same day at Gallipoli, 28 June 1915. (Glasgow Academy)
7. The First Wallabies 1908, featuring captain Paddy Moran, Tom Richards, Danny Carroll and Syd Middleton. (World Rugby Museum)
8. A more formal shot of the 1908 Wallabies tourists taken before leaving Australia. (World Rugby Museum)
9. The 1905 All Black Originals prior to their first stunning victory over Devon. Captain Dave Gallaher holds the ball. (New Zealand Rugby Museum)
10. The 1905 All Black Originals in informal pose, less intimidating in boaters. (Alexander Turnbull Library)
11. New Zealanders playing rugby at the front near Fontaine. No rugby kit, just what they stood up in. (Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library)
12. The Horowhenua Māori side of 1913, featuring brothers Jack and Charles Sciascia. (Alan Sciascia)
13. The Vancouver ‘Rowers’ with the Miller Cup in 1911. Reggie Woodward, club founder, who lost his son Tommy, is back left, next to Scots internationalist Andrew Ross. To his left, Nelles Stacey and Russel Johnston. Captain T.E.D. Byrne holds the ball. (VRC)
14. Rowers’ 1913/14 squad. Malcolm Bell-Irving sits centre in the plain jersey. Owen Sawers, killed at Ypres in 1915, is the second player from the left in the back row. (VRC)
15. California dreaming: American optimism in 1910 as a Stanford/UCal Berkeley student squad tours Australia and New Zealand. (Library of Congress)
16. American disillusion sets in as Australia narrowly beat the USA in 1912. (Library of Congress)
17. USA Olympic finalists 1920: Rudi Scholz (standing 5th from left) is next to the Australian dual internationalist and 1908 Olympic champion Danny Carroll (7th from left). (Author)
18. Liverpool FC’s great 1913/14 side with three international skippers: Dickie Lloyd and Ronald Poulton-Palmer (named as Poulton on the team list) sit beside club captain Freddy Turner. (Liverpool St Helens RUFC)
19. Edgar Mobbs skippers the combined East Midlands/Midlands team in France in 1913. Australian rugby troubadour Tom Richards is back left. (Author)
20. Recruits for D Company, 7th Royal Dublin Fusiliers, at Lansdowne Road, September 1914. Sergeant Major Guest and Frank Browning at front. (Lansdowne FC)
21. The ‘Combined Irish’ against the Springboks in 1912. Robert Burgess, winning his single cap in this game, stands under the letter D, which seemingly held fatal significance for rugby players in this war; he was killed by a shell while cycling through Armentières. (Patrick Casey)
22. The 1910 Welsh team to play France at Swansea, captained by Billy Trew, including Ben Gronow, Charles Pritchard, Phil Waller and Hop Maddock. (Frédéric Humbert)
23. Fernand Forgues again led the 1913 French champions in the final season before the war and would face England at Colombes in the last International. (Frédéric Humbert)
24. Aviron Bayonnais (with most of the team in Basque berets) are hailed by Le Plein Air as 1913 champions of France with the Forgues brothers, Harry Roe and the doomed Hedembaigt, Iguiñiz and Poeydebasque in the line-up. (Frédéric Humbert)
25. Captain Alec Todd (3rd from left), British Lions and England forward. A lost letter describes meeting ‘ruggers’ at the front; these unidentified men of different ranks and regiments may be that meeting; on the right may be Dickie Lloyd of Ireland and Liverpool Scottish. Todd was fatally wounded at Hill 60 in April 1915. (David Byass)
26. Blair Swannell, the Northampton-born forward for Britain and Australia, killed on the first day of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli. (World Rugby Museum)
27. The Australian Imperial Force Trench Team in France in March 1917, looking as rough and ready as you would expect in wartime. (Frédéric Humbert)
28. After the Armistice the winter of 1918/19 was hard, but did not stop the Australians playing rugby. The Chaufferie entrée interdite behind them must have been a sore temptation. (Frédéric Humbert)
29. Major R.V. Stanley and his all-conquering Army Service Corps (Motor Transport) Grove Park team: Ben Gronow, with distinctive lugs, stands behind General Burn, with Harold Wagstaff next to Stanley. (Huddersfield Rugby League, a Lasting Heritage – www.HuddersfieldRLHeritage.co.uk)
30. ‘The Battle in the Football Field’: the ASC defeat a NZ team by 21–3. This is more likely to be the UK HQ team than the fearsome Trench Team. (Frédéric Humbert)
31. Rugby grew in popularity in the French military. Here the players of the 24e Régiment d’Artillerie de Campagne. (Frédéric Humbert)
32. The AIF Reserve team, captained by Peter Buchanan, which toured Britain during the King’s Cup. (World Rugby Museum)
33. New Zealand playing the South Africans at Twickenham, 29 March 1919. The sparse crowd on a bright but chilly day is mainly military. (New Zealand Rugby Museum)
34. King George V presents his cup to James Ryan, captain of the New Zealand Services Team before the France game at Twickenham. (Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library)
35. The New Zealand Division rugby team visit Versailles; with these men outside the windows, peace was swiftly concluded. (Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library)
36. New Zealand Services rugby team performing the haka before a match in France, 1919. (Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library)
37. The King’s Cup. For reasons unknown, Charles Brown is shown as captain, not James Ryan. The engraving may have been done after the return home, by when Brown had captained the team in South Africa. (New Zealand Rugby Museum)
38. The memorial to London Scottish and Richmond’s fallen at the Richmond Athletic Ground. (Author)
39. Hope for the future: Afghan children playing rugby in 2015 before the ruins of the presidential palace built in 1920. (Asad Ziar)
Front Cover illustration, bottom: © Sharon Heffernan, Cill Dara RFC
Copyright
First published 2015
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After the Final Whistle Page 31
