After the Final Whistle

by Stephen Cooper

  Lieutenant Charles Usher of the Gordon Highlanders was the first serving soldier to captain a national team when he led Scotland in 1912. He was now one of four capped Scots to turn out for the Services team, with Gallie, Sloan and Laing. He had spent much of the war as a guest of the Kaiser at Bayreuth, where he ‘did a great deal to keep up the spirits of his fellow-prisoners’: ‘He conducted a gymnastic class every morning, encouraged games, taught Highland dancing and even gave instruction on the bagpipes.’ Membership of the escape committee doubtless boomed, as his co-prisoner Lieutenant Dobson, RNVR, observed: ‘It was an open question whether this last form of sport could be considered a benefit to the community.’3 Usher would resume his Scotland rugby career after the war, winning a total of sixteen caps. On the matter of the pipes, the record is thankfully silent.

  Wales were represented by Clem Lewis at stand-off, Bill Havard and Charlie Jones. Clem Lewis joined the 16th Welsh Regiment (Cardiff City) while it was being raised in late 1914. As Lieutenant J.M.C. Lewis he was wounded at Pilckem Ridge on 31 July 1917, as Passchendaele kicked off. Charles William Jones was, in boxing terms, a comeback kid: an Old Contemptible from the pre-war Regular Army, he was so badly wounded at Mons in August 1914 that he was invalided and attached to the British Mission in New Mexico. He later joined the army gymnasium staff as an instructor at Portsmouth and won three Welsh caps in 1920, and seven for the army between 1920 and 1923 – the first non-officer to play – whilst also playing for Newport and Leicester. Captain Reverend Bill Havard, MC, of Llanelli, chaplain to the 10th South Wales Borderers and the Brigade of Guards, was a late rugby convert. A Swansea Town amateur centre forward before the war, he won his rugby Blue in 1919 in a game surely guided by divine providence: a last-minute injury replacement, he switched from the pack at half-time to replace crocked full back Waldock and converted Gerald Crole’s try. Truly is there more joy in heaven over one sinner who repenteth. He won his sole Welsh cap in April against this same NZ Services team and later became Bishop of St David’s.

  One unsung member of the side made a significant, if unwitting, contribution to our perception of the Great War. Major Philip Henry Lawless, captain of Richmond, enlisted in the Artists’ Rifles in October 1914, was commissioned in the 18th Middlesex in 1915, served on the Somme and at Salonika, and was awarded the MC in 1918. He was ‘capped’ not by England, but four times for this Mother Country team. He reported on rugby and golf for the Morning Post and the Daily Telegraph. More dangerously at Remagen in 1945, he was covering the Americans crossing the Rhine into Germany when he was killed by enemy fire.4 His daughter Pamela married Peter Faulks, who had won an MC fighting in Tunisia; their son Sebastian wrote the novel Birdsong in 1993, and opened eyes anew to a conflict that had faded from view.

  In a close game, New Zealand forward power prevailed in front of 15,000 spectators including a proud Prime Minister William Massey. He had seen his country through wartime and now found it emerging as a sporting power and a new voice in international affairs. He was in Europe as a statesman, attending the Paris peace conference which would set a course for the world’s future; at Twickenham he was as nervous as any Kiwi rugby fan:

  ‘Old Bill’, as he was affectionately termed, went into the New Zealand dressing-room at half-time, and wore a worried look. Things had not gone too good for the New Zealanders, and Mr. Massey approached one of the husky forwards and urged him to ‘do his best for New Zealand; the people back home look forward to success.’ There came an unexpected reply: ‘Leave ’em to us, Bill. Politics might be your game, but this is our picnic.’

  In the second spell the New Zealanders used steam-roller tactics and gave the clever English backs no chances. After the final whistle Mr. Massey once again visited the dressing-room, but this time he wore a triumphant smile. His friend, the husky forward, was taking a shower. Mr. Massey grasped his hand, shook it with great fervour and stood there completely oblivious of the fact that the shower was on and that he was being drenched.5

  Singe and Ford scored tries for New Zealand and Stohr kicked a penalty in a 9–3 victory. The Mother Country’s points came from a penalty by Cumberlege.

  New Zealand might reasonably now have expected to receive the King’s Cup for their labours. But this tournament was stage-managed to celebrate Allied unity, and the French could hardly be excluded without diplomatic incident and gross insult to the 1.4 million poilus who had given their lives. So the New Zealanders thus far had only earned the right to represent the ‘Armies of the British Empire against the French Army’. French rugby confidence was growing: they had acquitted themselves well on their home ground against Anzac and Australian Trench Teams and proved themselves worthy to be invited to the party. Twickenham would host the game again, so the long road trips were over for the New Zealanders. After typically thorough preparation, a legacy from the Originals, Ryan led his men back to the fray once more. In a coda to the main tournament, they faced a side that was short of international experience (and of one eyeball), but long on nicknames, and full of promise for France’s rugby future.

  Their équipe was captained from outside half by Philippe ‘Struc’ Struxiano, a Stade Toulousain player who had been capped twice in 1913 and would win five more in 1920. He had also been a substitute for the French soccer team. As a cyclist in the 83e Régiment d’Infantérie, he was seriously wounded at Souchez, north of Arras, in 1915, and did not return to service until April 1918, not in the trenches but with the Air Force at Avord in central France. His half-back partnership was somewhat improvised, as Lieutenant Jean Domercq, a banker’s son and tank commander from Bayonne, normally played back row, where he was capped against Ireland and Scotland in 1912. But he had learned his trade at Harry Roe’s Aviron Bayonnais academy where forwards played like backs.

  Several players as yet unattached to clubs were shown as belonging to Association Sportive de Chauffeurs d’Artillerie (ASCA) Sathony; they were ‘artillery drivers’ from the military camp outside Lyon, equivalent to Major Stanley’s ASC (Motor Transport) unit. The forwards featured Sergeant Major Fernand Vaquer, known as ‘le Maréchal’, who would win three caps in 1921 and 1922. He remained a career soldier, hence the nickname, and became a legendary figure in Catalan rugby for sixty years, playing for both Perpignan teams (winning the 1921 French championship with L’Union Sportive Perpignan), both Toulouse teams and Roussillon. Sous-Lieutenant Robert Thierry from Racing Club played for his country four times in 1920 despite losing an eye. Capitaine Pierre Pons, a prop and hooker for Stade Toulousain and AS Perpignan, won half a dozen French caps by 1921 and gloried in the enigmatic nickname of ‘La Joconde’. As with Leonardo’s original Mona Lisa, no one knows why; he became director of Toulouse’s veterinary school, but this offers no clue.

  One rising star was Private Aimé Cassayet-Armagnac, whose name predictably proved too much for the English programme printers. This lock and number eight played for the 1920 champions Stadoceste Tarbais, with Jean Nicolaï, another forward and future wine-merchant; he amassed thirty-one caps until 1927 when he died, still young at 34, of a sudden illness on the day of the French rugby cup final. Aimé had spent almost the entire war in a German prison camp, and was itching for some action. Of the others, Soldat Soulié would win nine French caps and Private Desvouges one. Sergeant Mazarico at full back, wing Lieutenant Loubatié and forwards Major Dillenséger and Sous-Lieutenant Galliax have left fewer traces.

  In the centre, Sergeant Félix Lasserre, another from the Aviron Bayonnais championship team of 1913, and known as ‘René’ or ‘Poulet’, later played for Cognaçaise and Grenoble. He was a fighter pilot and later café owner and cognac distiller – all things considered, a good man to have on the team. In 1921 he became the first player to be selected for France both as a forward (flanker) and a threequarter, thanks again to Roe’s manière Bayonnaise. Soldat René Crabos, also in the centre, played seventeen times between 1920 and 1924. Sergeant Major ‘Le Roi Jean’ Etcheberry, still only 17 (very young for a king
and sergeant major, but promotion came rapidly with the high French casualty rate) was another versatile winger who converted to a forward as he put on age and weight. This metalworker from Boucau, near Bayonne, played after the war for SA Rochefortais, Boucau Stade and US Cognaçaise. Along with Lasserre and Cassayet-Armagnac, he would play against the USA at Colombes in 1924. He earned himself sixteen caps in a long career, including two in 1927 against, of all nations, Germany. Such is rugby’s power to forgive, forget and move on in search of a good contest.

  Royalty was out in force on 19 April, with King George bringing all four princes, along with dignitaries from the rival countries, Field Marshal Haig, the nation’s garlanded saviour, and Chief of the Imperial General Staff, for good measure. Before the game kicked off, the king stepped forward to present his cup to New Zealand skipper James Ryan. The French were left under no illusion that they were a digestif after the main banquet at the triumphal Imperial house party. The Times was in no doubt of the game’s greater meaning:

  It was more than a mere football match; it had more the character of a national festival at which the presence of the King and his four sons, Sir Douglas Haig, Sir Henry Wilson, the French Embassy staff and the High Commissioner for New Zealand gave special significance … it was a true ‘Victory’ match.6

  The military contest was refereed by Major J.E.C. Partridge of the Welsh Regiment, who was, appropriately enough, the senior officer on the field. His rugby credentials we have seen: this Newport player and Boer War veteran stayed on in South Africa after the fighting and played for them against the touring British (and Louis Greig) in 1903; he played the All Black Originals in 1905 when with Blackheath (the club fielded twelve internationalists, but still lost by thirty-two points). He then led the founding of the Army Rugby Union in 1906, was a Barbarian regular for years and played the wartime charity matches including – ironically for the Welsh-born ‘Birdie’ – their first ‘international’ when they surprisingly beat Wales in 1915, with Edgar Mobbs at the helm.

  Sadly on this momentous Twickenham occasion in the brave new world of 1919, he played to the British officer stereotype by controlling the game poorly. When the final whistle of the King’s Cup blew for ‘no side’, the match ended in another New Zealand victory over France, 20–3. A pattern was set for their next two Rugby World Cup Final reunions, both at Eden Park. Not for the last time, a New Zealand team could claim to be rugby champions of the world. At the time of writing they still are.

  A final celebratory dinner was thrown for all combatants. Many, like Frank Mellish, had already handed in their army kit to the quartermaster. They all got noisily demob-happy: ‘The evening ended in a never-to-be-forgotten banquet at Oddedino’s when I sat next to the brilliant French wing threequarter, Jauréguy.’

  Young Lieutenant Goddard from Australia expressed the views of all parties when he concluded his report of the tournament:

  The presence of the four Dominion teams in this contest was a splendid thing for Rugby in England … this great contest did more in a month to bring it back to its pre-war popularity than the ordinary club games would have done in a couple of seasons.

  He might have added that the subsequent regional tours by New Zealand and Australian XVs and Reserve teams did even more to revive enthusiasm. They took their brand of attacking rugby to the green and pleasant fields of grass-roots clubs throughout England and Wales, which had been starved of competitive rugby since March 1914. From Ebbw Vale to Bradford, the New Zealanders racked up thirty-six games, and from Penzance to Ogmore Vale and Maesteg went the Australians: their Reserve side met formidable Llanelli three times, taking the first game but losing the rubber, a reminder of defeats by Welsh clubs in 1908. The New Zealand touring side included ‘Ranji’ Wilson and Māori Pioneer, Parekura Tureia, bringing back memories of the first Māori tourists, now thirty years past. It was springtime again for rugby: New Zealand’s winning team went to Swansea and then played in Paris, Pau and Toulouse in May. During the King’s Cup tournament the South African High Commissioner, W.P. Schreiner had invited them for a six-week tour of the Union to break their long journey home. The political wrangling over vice-captain Wilson and Tureia came later.

  The RFU, emboldened by the success of the King’s Cup, reasserted its authority over the game. Welsh proposals for minor reforms of amateur regulations were easily rejected and New Zealand’s more forceful approach was rebuffed. The Empire had struck back against leadership challenges, but the RFU’s attitude to the game remained insular rather than international. The boom in the domestic game and England’s soaring success under Wakefield with Grand Slams in 1921, 1923 and 1924 created a complacency which would be rudely upset by the returning All Blacks in 1925, who brushed away all comers to earn their ‘Invincibles’ title.

  Wavell Wakefield pointed out the overriding positives of the King’s Cup, which, to his mind, was

  … a splendid opportunity during the transition period, while men were waiting to be demobilised or to be returned to their Dominions, to get Rugger started and also to see something of the best players from overseas … it was unique in Rugby history for footballers representing so many parts of the Empire to play against one another.

  Australia’s Goddard too sensed the unique moment for his countrymen and was grateful for the opportunity, with blithe understatement and an endearing absence of irony, in his swiftly published report:

  We in Australia are a long way from ‘the hub of the Universe’. Ordinarily it costs a whole lot of money and takes many weeks of travel for an ‘Antipodean’ to reach England. But the past five years have caused so many changes and upset things to such an extent that between two and three thousands of us have not only seen England and the Continent free of cost, but have been paid for doing so.

  Wide-eyed with enthusiasm, he does not trouble with the human cost of their jaunts to Fromelles, Pozières and Amiens. (‘Oh, that? Yeah, no worries, mate.’) But as with the Empire, so with rugby union, and a moment passed: the exhausted relief of victory in war and an adrenaline surge of conquering euphoria only masked a gradual but relentless move away from Britain as its heart and hub.

  A precarious peace broke out between victorious rugby nations in the aftermath of war. The renewal of the inflexible RFU stance was hardly on a par with the vindictive reparations of Versailles, but it did not help the game’s development. If there had been any doubt since the 1905 ‘Originals’, it now became clear this was no longer Britain’s game to own. The absence of invitations to tour the heartland meant that the distant Dominion powers turned away and formed new rivalries, notably that between All Black and Springbok. Even neighbouring France, frustrated by a largely self-inflicted running battle with its Five Nations partners, turned away into the outstretched arms of Germany – almost unthinkable after the bloodbaths of Verdun and the Chemin des Dames. Those arms did not wrap warmly: the recent foe and new rugby opponent would later drive France into the ground in a political and military spear-tackle of crushing Nazi savagery.

  In 2015 the William Webb Ellis Trophy has come back to Britain in time for the tournament. As an international envoy for rugby, it has made an epic return journey through emerging rugby nations which would impress even the much-travelled Tom Richards and Blair Swannell. The King’s Cup trophy remains in New Zealand; the three arms of its Defence Force play for it with passion each year. It may be out of sight for most of the world, but it should not be out of mind.

  In this year of rugby celebration, amidst four years of centenary commemoration of war, we must remember what it stands for, and the sacrifice that made it possible.

  Notes

  1 The Times, 19 January 1914.

  2 The full list can be inspected at www.espn.co.uk/scrum.

  3 Lt T.J. Dobson, RNVR, WO161/95/62, National Archives.

  4 Biography at www.sebastianfaulks.com.

  5 W.F. Ingram, ‘Our Soldier Athletes – Their Fame in Battle and Sport’, New Zealand Railways Magazine, Vol. 14, Issue 12,
1 March 1940.

  6 The Times, 21 April 1919.

  16

  Aftermath and Recovery

  Under the bludgeonings of chance

  My head is bloody, but unbowed.1

  It was time to go home.

  Rugby’s cup from the king may have run over in the euphoria of 1919, but choppy waves on the long voyage home in peace spilled much of its precious wine (that’s enough of that metaphor). After the symbolic sporting celebration at Twickenham of Allied and Empire unity, and the implicit canonisation (or at least a knighthood) conferred on rugby for its contribution, Rugby union’s post-war recovery was vigorous. But seeds of discord sown both at home and abroad germinated. Political tensions had surfaced, which would be further fed by popular narratives of high-handed British incompetence emerging from Gallipoli and the Somme that only seemed to reinforce the touring experiences of All Black and Wallaby in the first post-war decade. As mighty a force as rugby is, it could not mend the widening fissures in Imperial relations, only paper over the cracks.

  In its English homeland, the red rose bloomed under the vigorous back-row play and assertive leadership of Wavell Wakefield, with three Grand Slams by 1924. They could not, however, overcome the might of the 1925 All Black Invincibles, even when these were reduced to fourteen men at Twickenham by Brownlie’s sending off. The British game boomed with a new-found confidence as the professional middle classes and public schools further consolidated the war-winning game as their winter sport of choice. In the ‘Great War for Civilisation’ rugby had done its bit and would now reap the spoils of victory. Rugby carefully built its creation myth during the 1920s and seized upon the anniversary of Webb Ellis’s moment of fine disregard to celebrate in style. Wavell Wakefield was an automatic selection for the historic Centenary Match at Rugby School in 1923, when a joint England and Wales side played Scotland and Ireland for the first time.