After the Final Whistle

1

On Rugby Fields the
Whistles Blow

Twickenham: Friday 18 September 2015

A whistle sounds at 20.00 GMT at Twickenham to start England's first game of the 2015 Rugby World Cup against Fiji. It is heard around the world.

Let us go back 110 years.

Crystal Palace: Saturday 2 December 1905

Welsh referee, Mr Gil Evans begins the first meeting between white-shirted England and the All Blacks. He also officiates when Cardiff RFC successively play the All Blacks, the South Africans in 1907 and Australia in 1908; to celebrate this treble, Cardiff present Evans with an engraved sterling silver 'Acme Thunderer No. 58'. This passes on to countryman Albert Freethy, who uses it to referee the 1924 Olympic Games rugby final in Paris.

Twickenham: Saturday 3 January 1925

At the second encounter of All Black and all-white, Albert has the whistle again. When neither captain can produce a coin for the toss, he flips a florin lent by supporter Hector Gray, who later engraves it with a rose and fern; Freethy blows the Thunderer to dismiss New Zealand's Cyril Brownlie, the first player sent off in an international Test.

Eden Park: 22 May 1987

By now the sterling silver is nicked and worn with age; every surface is engraved with its history, like battle honours or a trophy. Australian referee Bob Fordham whistles for the start of the first modern Rugby World Cup. The florin has been tossed, and the trusty Acme has blown to kick off every one since.

RC Compiègne, France: Sunday 25 October 2009

On the edge of the Compiègne forest, where the Armistice was signed in 1918, is a rugby field. Two teams of 14-year-old boys surround a memorial bearing fifty-eight French names, all killed in the Great War; the visiting side from England remembers 109 from its own club. On this Sunday morning, before their game, a whistle signals a minute's silence.

These young tourists from Rosslyn Park, immortal in their teenage rugby swagger, know little of the fate of Australia's Jim Martin at Gallipoli, Horace Iles from Leeds or John Condon from Waterford, Ireland, at Ypres: all died at their tender age of 14 in that war. But they listen solemnly to a French Army officer who tells them that 'rugby and warfare share a common language, but - il nous faut souvenir, enfin - they are very different'.

Rosslyn Park, London: Saturday 29 March 2014

A trench whistle starts a match of centenary remembrance, played in baggy cotton jerseys, some splendid facial grooming and under pre-war Laws. This whistle was taken in 1916 from the body of an officer in the Yorkshire Regiment by a German soldier; it was later returned to the regimental museum by his descendants and still bears the scar of a shrapnel splinter.

The shared language of rugby and warfare still prevails today, a century after the war which first connected them, as rugby's latter-day scribes conjure the stark imagery of conflict. An untried England team under new coach Stuart Lancaster opened their 2013 campaign away to an experienced Irish side; unfancied, they came away from atrocious Dublin weather with an unexpected 12-6 win. One journalist wrote: 'These are no mere kids who need the roar of a Twickenham crowd to encourage them to puff out chests. These are guys for the trenches, steely and trustworthy.'1 One hundred years later, the rugby field shares a common lexicon with the battlefield.

My generation can still hear in its mind's ear the sonorous burr of Bill McLaren, 'voice of rugby' and former artillery gunner, describing the boot of Gavin Hastings as 'mighty like a howitzer'.2 The Times reported 'aerial bombardment' when Wales played New Zealand in 1935; passes are 'fired', stand-offs launch 'torpedo' kicks, and scrum-halves 'snipe' round the blind side. Where did it come from, this language bond between rugby and warfare? And how is it that a century later the imagery born of the Great War is still deployed (see what I did there?) to add colour and drama to sports reports? It is not, heaven forbid, lazy journalism but something deeper, more intuitive, and an echo of shared values.

My conclusion is this. There are many sports that carry danger and physical risk for individual competitors, notably anything to do with horses and cars. Boxers, of course, willingly climb into the ring for a beating, and sadly even cricketers now face untimely death at the crease. Uniquely, however, in team sports rugby players deliberately and consistently, and without the protection of helmets or padding, put themselves in harm's way on behalf of others - on behalf of the team and in its common cause. This is what soldiers also do, and their comradeship sustains them far more than patriotic ideals or mission statements, or even Kevlar. Perhaps this explains the unconscious bond between rugby and soldiering and, in consequence, an almost symbiotic vocabulary.3

In a far better-qualified view, Australian Army chief General Sir Peter Cosgrove put it more explicitly:

There are similarities between the harsh and lethal demands of warfare and the thrill we get from a full-bodied contact sport like rugby. The thing about rugby is that it does prepare people to keep going under severe stress when things they have to do are extraordinarily hard.4

Cosgrove was not the first military commander to draw the parallel. Admiral Lord Jellicoe, commander of the Grand Fleet in 1914, concurred:

Rugby football, to my mind, above all games is one which develops the qualities which go to make good fighting men. It teaches unselfishness, esprit de corps, quickness of decision, and keeps fit those engaged in it.5

After the war, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig declared that team sport required 'decisions and character on the part of the leaders, discipline and unselfishness among the led, and initiative and self sacrifice on the part of all'. It was his belief that 'the inspiration of games has brought us through this war, as it has carried us through the battles of the past'.6 The Scotsman reported the views expressed at the Scottish Football Union's AGM in October 1914:

The quick decision necessary to take an opportunity, the dash, the self-restraint, and the consideration for the opponent were most valuable training for both soldiers and sailors, and . was demonstrated by the fact that whenever this country has been at war Rugby men in large numbers went to the front.7

Paddy Moran, Australian captain in 1908, recalling the 'higher plane of organised roughness' of university rugby, noted:

When I read of [First Sea Lord] 'Jacky' Fisher's remarks while head of the British Navy, 'the essence of war is violence; moderation in war is imbecility', I thought his saying could well have been adapted to the Rugby Football of my own time. It was however largely a good-natured violence. Two commandments on which you were judged and condemned: Thou shalt not squib and Thou shalt not squeal.8

Rugby roughness gave them an appetite for the fight. The rugby writer, Edward (universally known as E.H.D.) Sewell recounts that one New Zealand officer 'lying smashed by Turkish bullets in hospital assured me that one of his chief troubles on Gallipoli was to keep back the Rugby players. Out of every twenty "first into" the Turkish trench, eighteen were Rugby men.' Even allowing for the popularity of rugby in New Zealand, this seems statistically unlikely, but we get the point.

In 1916, the Arrow in Australia paid tribute to rugby's wholehearted response to war:

The only bright spot in all this, apart from the fact that the Allies have the Germans hard on the defence, is that the response by rugby footballers has shown that their game is as fine a preparation for war as anything in the line of sport the world has invented. The response has come from all grades of players, from the juniors to the first graders of ordinary powers to the representative men, and to the men who have retired from play for many years. It is a great thing to dwell upon in this hour of the world's carnage.

Rugby and the military were already linked before the First World War. The Calcutta Cup, the oldest trophy in international rugby, originated from the army: stationed in India, the 3rd East Kent Regiment (The Buffs) and 62nd (Wiltshire) Regiment established rugby at the Calcutta Club. However, when The Buffs were posted out of India in 1876, enthusiasm for rugby waned and reduced membership forced the club to disband. From the 270 silver Indian rupees left in the kitty, a cup was made with its distinctive design, three cobras as handles and an elephant atop the lid. In 1879, the Calcutta Cup was presented to the RFU to be competed for annually by teams from England and Scotland. The first match, in 1879, was a 3-all draw; it was on 28 February 1880 that England became the cup's first winners in Manchester.

Rugby, however, had to fight for its place in the British Army: in 1906, there were 578 army soccer teams, with 180 in the Royal Navy. The inauguration that year of the Army-Navy...