ALL BLACKS v. BARBARIANS
QERHAPS the toughest side the All Blacks will play on their current tour will be encountered this week at Cardiff. It is the Barbarians, otherwise | known as the Ba-Bas, a side usually composed. of internationals or potential internationals from the four countries of the United Kingdom. Though the Barbarians’ Club has no home ground and no regular team, it is a valued honour among footballers to be invited to play for it. The club’s aim is to maintain and spread the best tfaditions of Rugby football, and its matches are usually a pleasure to watch. The chairman of the Cardiff Rugby Football Club, Sid Cravos, himself a Barbarian, once wrote: "There is about the Ba-Bas game a thrill of anticipation and a feeling of indefinable excitement, coupled with the certainty that, whatever the result, the game will be one to store in one’s memory to savour again and again in ‘the years to come." The Barbarians’ origins go back to 1891, when a Blackheath player, W. P. Carpmael,, decided to take a team of Blackheath men, together with players of other London clubs, on a short trip to play Hartlepool Rovers. The idea caught on, and today the club plays annual matches against East Midlands, Leicester, Penarth, Cardiff, Swansea and Newport. Great players who have toured with the Ba-Bas include Prince Obolensky, the White Russian, who will be remembered for a great try scored against the All Blacks in 1936, and WilsonShaw, the Scottish outside half. The former English captain Toft, together with the Irishmen Mayne and McKibbin, toured with the Barbarians just before World War II. New Zealanders who have received the coveted invitation to play include George Aitken, formerly of Wellington, N.Z. Universities, and New Zealand, who went on tour with the Ba-Bas in 1923-24. The Canterbury, South Island and New Zealand player Cobden ,toured .with the team in the 1938-39 season, and the former Otago wing-threequarter Botting (also an Oxford University and England player) joined the Ba-Bas for the 1949 match against Leicester.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 761, 19 February 1954, Page 19
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340ALL BLACKS v. BARBARIANS New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 761, 19 February 1954, Page 19
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