English Rugby 101 E-Book

John Griffiths

• Herausgeber: Polaris
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 106

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

English Rugby 101 is a compendium of fascinating facts, stats, stories, personalities and trivia – perfect for all fans of English rugby. From the very first Test match against Scotland in 1871 all the way through to the present day, England's rugby's rich history is distilled into 101 facts, stats and stories. This entertaining volume is an instructive, if sometimes irreverent – but always affectionate – guide to some of the groundbreaking firsts, controversies, innovations, characters, achievements and disasters that have taken place in at Twickenham and around the world. Whether an expert or a novice, this is the perfect companion for those who follow the exploits of the red-rose warriors on the field and love to bask in light of their glorious (and sometimes inglorious) past.

Leseprobe

This edition first published in 2019 by

POLARIS PUBLISHING LTD

c/o Aberdein Considine

2nd Floor, Elder House

Multrees Walk

Edinburgh, EH1 3DX

Distributed by

ARENA SPORT

An imprint of Birlinn Limited

www.polarispublishing.com

www.arenasportbooks.co.uk

Text copyright © John Griffiths, 2019

ISBN: 9781909715806

eBook ISBN: 9781788851817

The right of John Griffiths to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

The views expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions or policies of Polaris Publishing Ltd (Company No. SC401508) (Polaris), nor those of any persons, organisations or commercial partners connected with the same (Connected Persons). Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers, or other information or content expressed by third parties are not those of Polaris or any Connected Persons but those of the third parties. For the avoidance of doubt, neither Polaris nor any Connected Persons assume any responsibility or duty of care whether contractual, delictual or on any other basis towards any person in respect of any such matter and accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by any such matter in this book.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Designed and typeset by Polaris Publishing, Edinburgh

Printed in Great Britain by MBM Print SCS Limited, East Kilbride

Photos courtesy of:

Inphophotography

Getty Images

John Griffiths’ archive

Arena Sport archive

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Rugby’s first national union

2 The youngest captain

3 Leading the rose

4 Rugby’s first superstar

5 Test rugby’s oldest cup

6 England’s highest scores

7 Most tries in a Test by a player

8 Captain of rugby and cricket

9 The Triple Crown

10 A successful captain

11 Played for two countries

12 The perfect Triple Crown

13 Family tries

14 The wily tactician

15 A new dawn

16 The Welshman who became an England rugby great

17 The Grand Slam

18 The father of English flankers

19 The deadliest finisher

20 The First World War

21 The moderniser

22 England’s oldest player

23 Fastest try

24 The personal clean sweep

25 The penny pincher

26 Twickenham calling

27 The flying hooker

28 Beating the All Blacks

29 The Russian prince

30 The unique Triple Crown captain

31 Televised rugby

32 The Second World War

33 The Second World War

34 Capped either side of the war

35 The round-the-corner kicker

36 The longest-lived member of the brotherhood

37 The most inexperienced fifteen

38 Fitness fanatic 1

39 The changing value of the dropped goal

40 Fitness fanatic 2

41 The last dual international

42 The flanker who always got his man

43 Grand Slam in front of the Royal Family

44 The master of the unexpected

45 Last-gasp finish

46 The longest wait

47 The India-rubber man

48 Sharp the guiding genius

49 Fifteen men for four Tests

50 The England cap-record breaker

51 Last win in Cardiff for 28 years

52 The last scoreless draw

53 On tour

54 Pullin’s run

55 The outstanding England threequarter of the early seventies

56 England’s first replacement player

57 The most-capped subs

58 First replacement referee in an England Test

59 Replacement referees

60 Losing at Twickenham

61 The changing value of the try Part One

62 The Whitewash Years

63 Beating the All Blacks in their own back yard

64 The first of the few

65 The early bath

66 The British bulldog

67 Always in the right place at the right time

68 The top try-scorers

69 The reliable Mr Andrew

70 England’s first penalty try

71 The Catalyst

72 Rugby World Cup record

73 The face of English rugby in the early nineties

74 Leading skippers

75 The prince of centres

76 The English Centurion

77 The leading cap winners

78 Winner takes all

79 The changing value of the try Part Two

80 Back-to-back Grand Slams

81 The Great Enforcer

82 Through the card

83 The ultimate professional

84 The 300 club

85 Record defeats

86 The unique dropped goal

87 Record margins

88 Romania 2001

89 Winning the Rugby World Cup

90 The dropped goal king

91 Putting in a full shift

92 Longest losing streak

93 Mind the gap

94 England’s longest-serving international player

95 Beating the world champions

96 England’s oldest try-scorer

97 Longest winning streak

98 The record score draw

99 England’s head coaches

100 Rugby in the Blood

101 The international record

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to the 1405 rugby players capped by England since 1871, as well as to the legion of legendary reporters and writers who have recorded their deeds. History, though, is an iterative process; details of the past are constantly challenged in order to converge on an accurate record of events. I am therefore also indebted to the veteran English rugby researcher Tim Auty, to Phil Atkinson and Philip Tarleton of the Rugby Memorabilia Society, and to Richard Steele and Phil McGowan at Twickenham’s World Rugby Museum for sharing primary evidence that challenges some facts relating to early international matches. Several of their rugby nuggets are embedded in this compendium. Finally, I should like to thank the rugby-mad Peter Burns of Polaris Publishing whose enthusiasm for this – and many other oval projects – has been infectious. There can never be too many books about rugby union.

Introduction

What is it about English rugby that unites other nations’ fans, albeit in good humour, against it? This pocket guide provides some answers as to why neutrals invariably support anyone facing the men in white.

England devised the handling game and framed its first laws, and England Rugby, the rebrand of the original Rugby Football Union, is the oldest union in the world. Which rule-taker wouldn’t relish the opportunity of teaching their rule-maker a lesson, or putting down the senior union?

But this distillation of 101 facts and stats, famous characters and matches sets out the many achievements – as well as some of the disappointments – of the national side, from taking part in the sport’s oldest international fixture (against Scotland in March 1871) to the highest score-draw in Test history (against the same adversary) that brought down the curtain on the 2019 Six Nations.

It is a collection that shows England has a rugby history to be proud of – more Championship titles, Triple Crowns and Grand Slams than any other nation, and three Rugby World Cup final appearances since the tournament began in 1987. It is a record to rightly make others jealous.

The statistics go up to 31st March, 2019

1

FAMOUS FIRSTS

Rugby’s first national union

The Chinese, Greeks and Romans all had words for a pastime that passed as a rudimentary form of football, and records show that mass brawls involving rival parishes mauling for possession of a ball took place on Shrove Tuesday holidays in Britain until the early 1800s. But it was the rise of the public schools during the Victorian era that accelerated the laying down of rules that transformed mob football into more refined versions. Different schools adopted different rules but dating the exact origins of the game that evolved at Rugby School and was characterised by handling and scoring goals by kicking the ball high over a crossbar is blurred by conspiracy theory and myth. Even so, masters migrating from Rugby, as well as past pupils exporting the school’s football code to the universities and big commercial centres, made a good fist of spreading the gospel. Their evangelical work was so effective that in January 1871, 21 clubs attended a meeting called with the aim of forming a Rugby Football Union.

The historic meeting of rugby football’s first recognised union (now known as England Rugby) was held at the Pall Mall Restaurant near London’s Trafalgar Square. Eight of those founder clubs flourish to this day: Richmond, Blackheath, Harlequins, Civil Service, Guy’s Hospital, Wellington College, King’s College and St Paul’s School. And a ninth club still in membership of the union would have been founder members had not the intrepid representatives of Wasps gone to the wrong London hostelry.

The urgent business of the fledgling union involved laying down a code of playing rules and in this respect the Rugby School Laws were more or less wholly adopted. The other pressing item for the new Union to consider was responding to the challenge issued by Scottish enthusiasts for a proposed Scotland–England international match to be played under Rugby rules.

2

FAMOUS FIRSTS

The youngest captain

England’s first rugby international was a 20-a-side affair staged on Edinburgh’s Raeburn Place on 27 March, 1871. They were beaten by a goal and a try to a try in the days before scoring by points, but their captain that day, Frederic Stokes of Blackheath, set a record which remarkably still holds. Stokes was 20 years and 258 days old when he led England and remains their youngest skipper in more than 145 years of Test rugby.

3

Leading the rose

Including Fred Stokes’s pioneering act in 1871, 129 men have captained England in Test matches.

Name

First captaincy

F Stokes

27 Mar 1871

AStG Hamersley

23 Feb 1874

HA Lawrence

15 Feb 1875

F Luscombe

13 Dec 1875

E Kewley

5 Feb 1877

MW Marshall

11 Mar 1878

FR Adams

10 Mar 1879

L Stokes

2 Feb 1880

AN Hornby

6 Feb 1882

ET Gurdon

16 Dec 1882

CJB Marriott

2 Jan 1886

Alan Rotherham

8 Jan 1887

F Bonsor

16 Feb 1889

AE Stoddart

15 Feb 1890

JL Hickson

1 Mar 1890

FHR Alderson

3 Jan 1891

SMJ Woods

6 Feb 1892

RE Lockwood

6 Jan 1894

EW Taylor

17 Mar 1894

F Mitchell

14 Mar 1896

JF Byrne

5 Feb 1898

Arthur Rotherham

7 Jan 1899

RHB Cattell

6 Jan 1900

J Daniell

3 Feb 1900

JT Taylor

5 Jan 1901

WL Bunting

9 Feb 1901

H Alexander

11 Jan 1902

B Oughtred

10 Jan 1903

PD Kendall

21 Mar 1903

FM Stout

9 Jan 1904

VH Cartwright

2 Dec 1905

BA Hill

5 Jan 1907

J Green

9 Feb 1907

EW Roberts

16 Mar 1907

TS Kelly

1 Jan 1908

JGG Birkett

18 Jan 1908

CEL Hammond

8 Feb 1908

LAN Slocock

21 Mar 1908

GHD’O Lyon

9 Jan 1909

R Dibble

16 Jan 1909

AD Stoop

15 Jan 1910

ER Mobbs

3 Mar 1910

ALH Gotley

18 Mar 1911

NA Wodehouse

8 Apr 1912

RW Poulton

17 Jan 1914

JE Greenwood

17 Jan 1920

WJA Davies

15 Jan 1921

LG Brown

21 Jan 1922

WW Wakefield

19 Jan 1924

LJ Corbett

15 Jan 1927

R Cove-Smith

7 Jan 1928

HG Periton

16 Mar 1929

JS Tucker

22 Feb 1930

PD Howard

14 Feb 1931

CD Aarvold

21 Mar 1931

AL Novis

11 Feb 1933

BC Gadney

20 Jan 1934

DA Kendrew

19 Jan 1935

HG Owen-Smith

16 Jan 1937

P Cranmer

15 Jan 1938

H Toft

19 Mar 1938

J Mycock

18 Jan 1947

J Heaton

15 Mar 1947

EK Scott

3 Jan 1948

TA Kemp

17 Jan 1948

RHG Weighill

29 Mar 1948

NM Hall

15 Jan 1949

I Preece

26 Feb 1949

VG Roberts

20 Jan 1951

JM Kendall-Carpenter

10 Feb 1951

RV Stirling

16 Jan 1954

PD Young

26 Feb 1955

E Evans

21 Jan 1956

J Butterfield

17 Jan 1959

REG Jeeps

16 Jan 1960

RAW Sharp

19 Jan 1963

MP Weston

25 May 1963

JG Willcox

4 Jan 1964

CR Jacobs

22 Feb 1964

DG Perry

16 Jan 1965

DP Rogers

15 Jan 1966

PE Judd

11 Feb 1967

CW McFadyean

20 Jan 1968

JRH Greenwood

8 Feb 1969

R Hiller

20 Dec 1969

RB Taylor

18 Apr 1970

AL Bucknall

16 Jan 1971

JS Spencer

13 Feb 1971

PJ Dixon

26 Feb 1972

JV Pullin

3 Jun 1972

FE Cotton

18 Jan 1975

A Neary

15 Mar 1975

RM Uttley

15 Jan 1977

WB Beaumont

21 Jan 1978

SJ Smith

6 Feb 1982

JP Scott

5 Mar 1983

PJ Wheeler

19 Nov 1983

ND Melville

3 Nov 1984

PW Dodge

5 Jan 1985

RJ Hill

7 Feb 1987

ME Harrison

4 Apr 1987

J Orwin

23 Apr 1988

RM Harding

16 Jun 1988

WDC Carling

5 Nov 1988

CR Andrew

13 May 1989

PR de Glanville

23 Nov 1996

J Leonard

14 Dec 1996

LBN Dallaglio

15 Nov 1997

AJ Diprose

6 Jun 1998

MJS Dawson

20 Jun 1998

MO Johnson

14 Nov 1998

KPP Bracken

2 Jun 2001

NA Back

10 Nov 2001

PJ Vickery