Secret History of the British Rugby Tour

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1076, 13 September 1930, Page 17

Secret History of the British Rugby Tour

The Story of the Rank and File . . . Why Bonner Played at Hamilton . . . Weakness in Methods of Selection . . . Players Who Were Discouraged.

(Written for THE SUB by

J. G. McLEAN

(The author was the only Press representative to accompany the British team throughout its tour as a member of the official party.)

HEN the British Rugby team landed in New Zealand, the question troubling the Management Committee of the New Zealand

Rugby Union was tile doubt about match- •'inning capacities. Several its in liifib places fearnl that the e m weakened by tho withdrawal of fw Wakefield. M Crowe. P. D. Scar'd and others, would not be of enough standard to capture the otc interest and recompense the pa fin for its heavy outlay, n is curious that the same doubt ! felt about the 1921 South At'ri- *** Teams which met the South driest* 9 iu the earl , y s,aKes . l of th ? ir ~r were, it is said, given the quiet t 0“ . . 0 -go easy,” to let the visitors *°£n lightly. But it was not ’ong .he redoubtable Springboks ini b i,sed their calibre, willy nilly, on P hdr opponents, and the British team 5 1930 did the same. Prom remarks made by several ‘hers of the team during the tour, Ms doubtful if tho loss of Wakefield ' ‘ a s erious one. Not only was he dd tobe past his best playing days, ‘rt al 9o bG was considered to be nmething of a martinet, and a man „ho would not have been conspicum.lv tactful in his dealings either ™ith the team or with New Zealandetlt may be revealed now that ono nan Maurice Brownlie, was disappointed that Wakefield did not como Between these two there were old scores to ba settled. To friends U Xew Zealand Brownlie had more •han once remarked that he would tike to have met liis old adversary once again. Prentice may not have been W akefield's equal as a player, but oft the neld he was an ideal captain, whose charming and courteous personality nude him popular with all. Many hare asked why he did not play more •ames in New Zealand. The fact is diat he went off badly after the early stages of the tour. He might have been played in the first Test, as he *as showing flue form at that time. In the second Test he got a place because of Hodgson's inability to play. For the fourth Test the choice for the last place in the pack lay between him and Welsh, and Welsh, a younger and Alter man, was selected. Prentice led his side against Australia, but did not have the satisfaction ct leading It to victory in a Test. The British team's trouble was sheer lack of football brains. In its ranks were the greatest collection of potential match-winners ever assemh ed in a touring team in this country. Bat the talent available was neither used nor directed to the best advantage. Where the New Zealand team and to New Zealand selectors made a Jeep study of the British team s methods, in order to ascertain its

® l »t3 of weakness, the directors of - British team's policy did not seem deem anything like that necessary. °7 toe time the British team had ®Ped victoriously round its iirst cir j’ of four matches, the New Zea ,™ wlectora were in a fever of ap»r«lWMion from which they did j, recover until Cooke’s second ..' to the fourth Test put the issue ji They went down to Praying for rain, knowing | v J to* 1 * to the spirited form which L “rush team was then displaying, iblv CF Bt> ' ® rm turf the y would prob Hi—ton the experimental and aged ' Black learn off its feet. At that j tte l °ur the British were a ■'ar k i day side - Later, when their P “ ac * is were either hurt or out of , ' * et conditions would have suited « better. ft, the whole of their ’atch y but two wet-ground SIL nn. at Dunedin and Invercar?lU, . rhe V had uniform luck both # , nea <her and in winning the ! to r big matches. )«a» an ..£ win matches," Aarvold used J. but l can win the toss.” ackt!i British failed because they "eir» ? oDcerted policy. They saw lo ono eaaDesses early in the tour, but Their it attem Pted to correct them. -j| h,,, a ; out work was poor throughioj'olon i, y did not tr y seriously to boy Jr m As a scrummaging force lido . ere tbe poorest 3-2-3 hooking lay L er seen in this country Had lark a ble to get the ball regu -ble' r y would have been invin f dly ’bough Parker was admit be . ker - they did not consider tottrth t lalist Kendrew until the esjtni f st - Martindaie made a suelit ty an nrs ‘ appearance as a hooker '■%_ bif, anil ' ’be first game of the Vim* 1 * not used in that posiIbt T *. m **ntil a fortnight ago, in itb hi«. gainst Australia. Farrell, 1 :» l5 record for Ireland in the front iMeallsk as .’be second, might have 1 J Uan e u ,-7? e d ifference to the hooking. 1 ’’ seven caps for Ireland, did | : *« tou^ ar until the third game of Pitiite tho 8 ”' 1 only then as a last-

touth was that the Test sides

were, with one or two exceptions, predetermined either when the team left England or before it had been long on b ° at - Men in the position of Dunne, Martindaie, Wilkinson and Davl ® s bad every reason to be discouraged. Dunne made no secret “ , i B , disappointment and chagrin, and if h e slackened off in his training it was because there was not much Pitch m keepius velig'iously at concert Jones-Davies was played in everv position from fullback to stand-off half, and m the latter position was brilliant. Yet for the big games the favours went elsewhere. The selection of Knowles, a plucky but totally unreliable man, for the Auckland match, when Spong was resting, was tile final blow to his hopes. Ihe "Rank and Pile” society which was formed with Martindaie as president did not come into existence in a spirit of rancour, but there was a definite reason for its existence. In the original programme the whole team was to have gone to Mount Cook

for two days. Mr. Baxter decided that there would be insufficient rest, and sent, in turn, the players not required for the Invercargill match and the players not required for the Timaru match. Nine or ten went in each party, and the seven or eight who under this arrangement could not go at all became the nucleus of the Rank and File. Ultimately all those who had not had Test games became members. Selection for a Test was nominally a disqualification, but Beamish and Ivor Jones, who periodically espoused the cause of the under-dog, were re warded with honorary membership. At the first formal conclave of the Rank and File, held at Gisborne, a

special design for a distinguishing tie, consisting of a black background with—significantly enough—red raspberries on it, was adopted, and a letter was dispatched at once to a firm of tie manufacturers in Auckland. Unfortunately, the order could not be executed, but the solidarity and class-consciousness of “the R. and F.” remained unimpaired.

Mr. Baxter at Fault Mr Baxter was faintly aware of these goings-on He even smiled at them tolerantly But if there had been more assurance that teams were selected or modified without respect to persons, the rank and file society might never have been formed With its five members, the British Selec tion Committee was, from the start, a cumbersome body. But when at times almost the whole Test team was dragged in to help in the selections, it became to outsiders a joke, Hie unique spectacle of a team meeting to select itself. | It was understandable that Aarvo-d. the captain in nearly all the majtn ! matches, should have been > uvlted t 0 ! assist and Beamish, one of the outstanding personalities of me team, had a definite right to be piesent I But when as many as haU-a-dozeii ! others were regularly present at t.imeetings, the weaknesses of the ‘system became appai cm.

j As a manager, Mr. Baxter had a ] | great number of good points, and j several bad ones. He was blind to the merits of several members of his team. He was an autocrat who. despite the numbers present at committee meetings, usually dominated the scene And even though he were perfectly unprejudiced in his judgments and decisions, it was then the I more unfortunate that a small coterie

semed consistently to enjoy the best things of the tour. The British manager was a particularly good man with the Maoris, and among them he made many friends. With others his relations were not always so happy Occasionally he quite unintentionally rubbed the represen tatives of local unions up the wrong way This was as unintentionally reciprocated at Napier, where after Mr. Baxter had just put in a particu- , larly satisfactory afternoon’s golf a ; local man blithely asked him if he had managed to break 100 yet! His comments on the wingforward early in the tour were ill-timed, but: he must be given credit for admirable j reticence once he realised he was on ! delicate ground. But for these ref- i erences, however, it is probably there |

| would have been no “McKenzie inci- | dent” at Auckland. Mr. Baxter took that unwarranted attack on his team very much to heart, and resolved (1) not to speak at another dinner in New Zealand, and (2) not tc permit the playing of the fourth test until Mr. McKenzie apologised Fortunately he was mollified by the conciliatory attitude of other of the New Zealand Union’s officials. He did not speak at thr Whaugarel dinner, where, in

consequence of this, it fel* to Bowcott (“Boke”) to make his first and only speech of the tour: but at Hamilton he relented, and made one of his characteristically polished and charming speeches.

The only disagreement of any kind with the New Zealand Union concerned the proposal to bring, out another halfback from India or England as a reinforcement after Murray had been hurt. The conversations during which the proposal was discussed were conducted over the telephone, between Wellington and Gisborne. According to Mr. Baxter’s version, the New Zealand Union at first refused to bear any share of the expenses, then offered to pay half, and finally agreed to pay the whole cost. By that time, however, Mr. Baxter refused to reopen the matter. Mr. Dean’s version may differ from this, but whatever happened, there was evidently some fairly “straight talk” over the telephone between the two, and at a meet-ting of the British team in the Masonic Hotel at Gisborne, Mr. Baxter gave the British players his full authority to make it known that the New Zealand Union’s attitude was the only reason why another halfback was not coming out.

Mr. Baxter came with a reputation as a great judge of football, but some of his judgments did not sustain 't. Knowles, a particularly fine type of youth, got more games and better games than he was entitled to on his form. Yet even Knowles, resolute and plucky in defence, sometimes showed up a man like Aarvold, whose fault of shadowing instead of tackling his man became more accentuated as the tour advanced. Aarvold played in both the wet-day-games, against strong packs of forwards, and came off the field in both instances with his white pants spotless. On their relative form Morley should have been played instead of Aarvold in the fourth test, and Hodgson instead of Black. Then there was the case of Bonner, who was humiliated iu the eyes of the team, of New Zealanders, and of his people at home. Admittedly Bonner was far from a great fullback, and he brought himself iuto disfavour at Wanganui by not going back to .he field, after his eye had been cut open, in order to let the badly crippled Sobey come off. He played poorly in the sixth game of the tour, against Canterbury, and after that did uot

get a game, even in minor matches at 1 Timaru, Gisborne, and Wbangarei. until the match at Hamilton, thirteen matches later. He might have been played at Gisborne, where there was a place going begging on the wing, but Wilkinson was taken cut ot the crum to fill the v 3ancy But for Bassett, he would not have got the chance in the Waikato match Bassett was originally chosen, and Bonner again faced the prospect of standing down. Bassett, realis ing that his unfortunate colleague bad been eight weeks without a game; discovered on t the day before the match a more or less imaginary injury to a knee. It was generally supposed that Bonner would at last have an opportunity, and accordingly consternation ruled in the team, and in the rank and file particularly, when it was learned that Mr. Baxter was considering playing Knowles. At the meeting of the selection commiti tec that evening, however, there were

| some very definite opinions offered. It j was probably the one occasion during * the tour on which Mr. Baxter was politely defied. At any rate, Bonner played, and gave a brilliant exhibition, which he repeated at Blenheim in the final match of the tour. The following excerpt from a letter written by one of the team just after the match against Australia will show the feeling of some of the team: “Once again the R. and F. were absolutely ignored in favour of the select ones. Well, personally, 1 have no grouse, but what about poor ’Mac’ Hodgson, Jock Welsh, Harry Wilkin ■ son. Jack Morley. etc. I cannot under i stand the dropping of any one of these. ’Wilkie’ played a great game against New South Wales. From our point s of view the match against Australia was a fiasco. Unfortunately, a very dissatisfied spirit has crept into the ■ team, but we all see the reason for I it.. Personally, I think the sooner the tour is over now, the better it i will be for all.”

A Happy Family Lest a wrong impression be drawn, it must be added that among themselves the players were a thoroughly happy family. They were “good mixers,” without the slightest hint of any division created by caste or snobbishness. Reeve and Rew, young men of ! considerable wealth (Reeve will | shortly inherit £1,500 a year of his I own) were as friendly with “Bishop” j Bassett, a policeman, as they were ] with any others of the team. Bassett, for that matter, was one i of the personalities of the side. He ! had a great collection of Welsh hymns, j picked up and learned by heart while , standing on his beat outside churches i and revival meetings. As a player, j he was effective and ruthless. No j man took liberties with Bassett, or, if j he did, failed to regret it. In the j Timaru match Bassett accounted for ■ two men iu one tackle, and came up with a serene smile while his adversaries lay prone upon the ground. Spong was another great personality. It may surprise many to learn that this gifted jmd courageous footballer, who in private life at home is engaged in the clerical side of a manufacturing business run by his family, would have willingly remained in New Zealand had a favourable offer been made to him. Ivor Jones, a steelworker, might also have been persuaded to remain. Spong’s bete noire was Porter. There was never any reason to doubt it. He and Murray frankly disliked the methods of the All Black captain, and although the statement that after the Wellington match some of the British team refrained from congratulating Porter was contradicted, it was nevertheless true. The New Zealand selectors were well aware of the moral effect Porter had on the British insides, and in the early Tests, when he was showing poor form, he probably owed his retention to this factor By the time the last Test had been won and lost, the British team had got to know “Cliff” better, and appreciated his good points. But for all their outward cordiality some of them never forgave him for the part he played in the Wellington match and the first Test.

Although Porter played in all four Tests, he did how his best form until the last. R. K. King, of Canterbury, F. Solomon (Auckland), and M. Brownlie would probably have given more consistent displays. After his game against the British team for Hawke’s Bay. Brownlie would have been asked to train with a view to selection for the All Blacks, but indicated definitely that he was uot available Cor further matches. There is an amusing story told concerning II Poole, the British halfback. and his experience of Solomon in the Auckland match After L. Knight's dismissal. Batty was takeD out of the pack, Auckland playing two wingforwards. Both are dark skinned players, and to a stranger look alike. After the match Poole said: “What a great wingforward Solomon is! 1 went round one side of the scrum, and there he was. So 1 dashed round the other side, and there he was again. He’s a marvel!” Each member of the British team had to provide his own trousers and boots, but two. pairs of stockings and two jerseyß were provided for each

man. The jerseys were of remarkable quality, and not one was torn during the whole tour. After the fourth Test as many as could do so exchanged jerseys with the All Blacks, and a photograph of them practising in Sydney a day or two after their arrival there shows half a dozen of them running about in white jerseys with the familiar fernleaf on the breast. When Mr. F. Sutherland, of Auckland, refereed the final Test match, he wore a green and black jersey, the composite jersey awarded to players who represented Scotland and Ireland in the Rowland Hill match at Twickenham. It had been lent to Mr. Sutherland by J. L. Farrell. Farrell was one of the wags of the party. A man of considerable means, he spent a lot of money in New Zealand, and enjoyed every moment of his tour. He and “Bill” Hazlett used to compare the size of their farms. Farrell's is SO acres in extent, and Hazlett’s is nearly that many miles long. Sobey was another cheerful soul, who never lost his whimsical smile, in spite of all the disappointments

and discomforts occasioned by his injured knee. That knee, by the way. would not have given nearly so much trouble had it been looked after from the start. Instead of being sent to hospital from the ground at Wanganui. Sobey was allowed to limp about the hotel, and accompanied the team to New Plymouth next morning. After a few days of painful hobbling about he was sent to Wellington for treatment, but even there he remained in the hotel instead of going off to hospital. | Socially Sobey was one of the most, j sought-after men in the party. It was | he who, when asked at one town if ] he had a partner for the dance that 1 evening, replied: “No, she's got me.”

Knowles was another who was much j in demand; but be was one of the | shyest members of the team. Nura- j bers of the team received a constant j mail from unknown admirers of the j feminine persuasion, and to some ! these letters became a real source of j embarrassment. In Dunedin two of the most popular members of the party received a letter in which two enterprising ladies, after detailing their charms at some length, offered to meet them at any time and place, the time and place to be stated in an advertisement in the “agony column” of a local newspaper. High Finance The private finance of members of the British team was arranged before the tour started with the English Rugby Union. The players paid in to the union cheques for various amounts, and drew on them as the tour progressed. At the end of the New Zealand programme, however, four members of the party had managed to subsist without drawing any ; money at all. Others had drawn up ! to £BO or £IOO, and were beginning (o wonder if they could get home without cabling for more. Some of them spent a lot of money Below—SOBEY , THE UNLUCKY j ONE, who played, only one game, during half of which he was crippled. Had Bonner resumed at Wanganui, Sobcy’s injury might not have been nearly so serious.

on souvenirs, but on the whole they spent far less than they would have done if touring in a private capacity. Every home, every dance-hall and every picture show in the country was thrown open to them They played on practically every golf course in New Zealand, and never had to pay a penny in green fees. Taxis at times cost them money, but more often than not these* were “on the union.” The heavy bills run up for taxis were a littlo difficult to adjust at the end of the tour, and before they left New Zealand, half a dozen players had to ;find among them £ls for taxi fares - ! which they had charged up to the j New Zealand Union. : | When they got to Australia, they ’ i found that the public there took them

less to Its hearty, and that living was more expensive. “We find we cannot do so much on the union as we did in ‘All Black land*,” wrote one of them soon after arrival in Sydney. Off the field, golf and dancing were the principal recreations of the team. They attended some weird and wonderful as well as some very enjoyable dances. In Christchurch after the second Test the dance hall was besieged by a crowd, and policemen had to help the players into the packed hall.

Some of the dances became festive occasions, but it could truthfully be said that intemperance was not one of the British team’s faults. Some of them, like Ivor Jones, were rigid teetotallers, and most of the others drank very little. There were one or two “blinds,** notably after the first Test at Dunedin, when from the British point of view the occasion warranted it. This was the evening when one of the British forwards told a New Zealand forward he would be “carried off” in the fourth Test. The Xew Zealander saved up that bit of information, and in the fourth Test the British player concerned suffered a broken nose.

Throughout the tour the British team was a well-behaved, orderly and disciplined band. Its members enjoyed themselves tremendously, bat in doing so rarely hurt anybody’s fecLings. By comparison with CoveSmith’s team in Africa, which at one important hotel dragged the carpet from the lounge out on to the street, and played cricket on it until someone “watered the wicket” with a garden hose, they were paragons. There was, however, an amusing episode at Gisborne, when one of the backs, returning from a dance in the early morning, set to work to erect a huge barricade of furniture across the door of the bedroom in which H. Poole was asleep. Spare beds, tables, chairs and palmstands all came readily to his hand as, watched by a pyjamaclad audience, he toiled industriously in the corridor Finally the barrier, rising to the ceiling, was complete. He looked about for something more, and the only movable object in sight was a fire-extinguisher. In taking it down from the wall, he accidentally knocked the top, setting it going. Not a whit perturbed, he first played it on his audience, then took it round to a bathroom, left it in the bath to play itself out’ locked the door, and threw' away the key. The Delights of Golf The golf was for the most part of rudimentary variety. Once off th# tees, the players scattered to all parts of the course, and might not see each other again until they converged near the green. Hodgsou, w ho drove a tremendously long bail, was one of the best golfers. Yet at Shirley one day, when the whole team was on the course, he had the mortification of hearing a lady behind him say, “I don’t believe any of these footballers can play golf.” Beamish was another fine golfer, playing on a handicap of 2. Murray was round about six, Bowcott about eight, Prentice 10, Aarvold and Reeve 12, and the remainder very, very erratic. Black was a keen student of golf, and spent much of his time reading a tremendous volume by Abe Mitchell. At Timaru, after a heavy dose of Mitchell, be sallied forth to the first tee, and in front of an admiring audience played two complete air-shots before slicing his third into a field of turnips. The humours of the golf course were never-ending. Tommy Knowles bought a set of clubs at Dunedin in the morning, and in -the same afternoon did the fourth at Balmacewan in one. Roy Jennings borrow-ed Beamish's clubs at Middlemore, and broke the champion’s pet iron in trying to play from the base of a tree. Sobey at Rotorua put three successive balls into the lake, and Jack Morley, at Heretaunga, similarly hypnotised by adjacent water, made three ineffective attempts to drive across a stream barely 20 feet wide. Jennings and Morley always played together, two of the greatest “characters” ever seen together on a golf course. They had many hard-fought encounters, but never in any circumstances took their scores at the first hole. This, as they explained, was to give them a chance of getting “the feel” of their clubs. From the second onward they scored with greater or less accuracy.

At Rotorua Morley was at one hole trapped in a deep bunker. He bent down to play the bail, and a perfect shot rose from the trap, to roll gently up to within six inches of the pin. The Welshman walked on to the green and triumphantly sank the putt for a win The night before the team left New Zealand, dinner was given over to an exchange of reminiscences about experiences in New Zealand. W’e got to talking golf. Of playing in the snow at Balmacewan, of the rugged little course at Timaru, and the high winds of Miramar Suddenly Morley referred to his experience at Rotorua. “You remember,” he said, “that shot 1 played out of the bunker at Rotorua?”

| “Yes, I do,” said Jennings. “It cos* j me the match.” Morley smiled In satisfaction. “I | threw that ball out,” he said.