Once Were Lions: The Players’ Stories: Inside the World’s Most Famous Rugby Team

The player set off for Sydney, leaving his close friend and fellow Leicester player and Lion, John Jackett, in tears on the quayside. Jackett himself had a notorious past which was already well known—a muscular Adonis, he had posed as a nude model, strictly for art’s sake of course.

But Jackson never made it home. Instead, he was greeted by pressmen at Sydney, and categorically denied any knowledge of the charges against him. He then disappeared, only to resurface in New Zealand after the Lions had finished their tour. Jackson had gone back to find a Maori woman that he had met during the tour, and it truly was a love match—they had four children, one of whom, Everard, would become an All Black prop before losing a leg fighting in the desert campaign in the Second World War.

Happy with his new wife in his new homeland, Frederick Jackson also played for New Zealand—funnily enough, at rugby league. He was capped for his new country in 1910 against the Northern Union, the then name of the British rugby league touring side, which beat New Zealand 52–20. Jackson lived until 1957, and despite research by his family, no one has ever been able to prove whether he was indeed either Jackson or Jones. The man himself never let on.

The Jackson scandal was just one of several problems for the 1908 Lions. This debacle of a tour was to prove a catalyst for the biggest change in the set-up of the Lions. Before the next tour to South Africa in 1910, and stung by the fact that the ‘colonials’ had become the masters of world rugby, the four home unions took a hand and decided that, from then on, the tourists would represent them as fully as any side which turned out in the white, blue, green or red jerseys of their home unions. Players selected for Tests would also be recognized—by some people at any rate—as full internationalists. The British and Irish Lions were formally born, though not yet called Lions.

CHAPTER TWO THEN THEY WERE LIONS 1910–1938 (#ulink_49dfee05-f4a9-57bc-941f-fa1f2c91f370)

Right from the start of the ‘official’ touring party superintended by the joint Committee of the Four Home Unions, often known since then as the Lions Committee, there were arguments about selection. The Welsh Union, appalled at what had happened in 1908, called on their fellow unions to select the best available players ‘irrespective of their social position’. The Welsh Union was correctly suspicious that the other unions, dominated by middle and upper-class interests, might prefer ‘gentlemen players’ rather than good honest stock from the Valleys. As a result, and with the Unions now fully behind the tourists, the first official British and Irish touring squad was as strong, if not stronger, than any of the parties who had gone south of the equator before them.

There was also recognition of the toll that injuries had taken on previous parties, as 4 replacements were later allowed to join the original 26 tourists. Of that 26, no fewer than 17 had already won caps for their country or would do so. The replacements were not too shabby either, as Eric Milroy, Alfred ‘Jim’ Webb and Frank Handford all represented Scotland, Wales and England respectively. Milroy suffered blood poisoning on the tour, which severely debilitated him; Webb switched to rugby league but went back to the mines; Handford enjoyed his time in South Africa so much that he emigrated there, as did fellow 1910 tourists Phil Waller and Kenneth Wood, neither of whom even bothered to go home after the tour.

The much-travelled Tom Richards, who had been capped for Australia, was then working in South Africa, for whom he was nearly selected. On the basis that he had once played a season in England at Bristol, he joined the Lions. Photographs in a ‘Pride of Lions’ exhibition at Twickenham showed him in both Australian and Lions colours—nationality was apparently a moveable feast in those days. Richards would go on to play for Australia again and then win the Military Cross for his bravery in the First World War, but he died young from the long-term effects of mustard gas.

Also gassed and decorated for heroism during the war was Stanley Williams, the brilliant full-back of the 1910 party. He was another Lion to be caught up in a huge row between administrators, the Welsh union objecting when England selected Williams despite him having been born in Monmouthshire, then playing for Newport and having taken part in an international trial in Wales. Perhaps sickened by the whole affair, Williams played just one season for England before retiring at the age of 25.

The Lions had other stars, notably Charles Henry ‘Cherry’ Pillman of Blackheath and England who was reckoned to have single-handedly revolutionized wing forward play with his audacious and inventive skills. His new tactic of detaching from the scrum to challenge the fly-half changed the way the game was played.

The visitors were captained by Dr Tom Smythe of Malone and Ireland, already renowned as a fine leader of rugby men who had been captain for Ireland against Wales earlier in the year, and who had also been a locum doctor in Newport, where the local club was in its pomp and supplied no fewer than seven of the 1910 Lions.

These Lions were definitely an improvement on previous touring squads, but South African rugby had continued to develop, and in 1906 the original Springboks had toured Britain and Ireland, losing to Scotland but drawing with England and beating Wales and Ireland. Playing in their new colours of blue jerseys, white shorts and red socks, the Lions were unbeaten in five matches in Western Province but on moving north to Griqualand West, the Lions succumbed twice in a place where they had lost twice in 1903. And as on that previous tour, they also lost to Transvaal twice.

The first Test in Kimberley was played without the injured Pillman and was lost 14–10, the first try being scored by Alex Foster who would go on to captain Ireland. The adaptable Pillman returned for the second Test, playing at fly-half, and completely dominated play in an 8–3 victory in Port Elizabeth. The Springbok captain Bill Millar was later moved to write that ‘if ever a man can have won an international match through his own inspired and lone-handed efforts, it can be said of the inspired black-haired Pillman’.

No one could know at that time that the deciding Test in Cape Town would be the last played by the British and Irish Lions for 14 years. It ended in an ignominious 21–5 defeat for the visitors, who were hampered by the loss of their full-back early in the match—there were no substitutions for the Lions in those days.

Cherry Pillman went on to inspire England to four successive international championships, which France had joined to make the Five Nations. All five of those nations would then be involved in the war that was supposed to end all wars. They would be augmented by many men from South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, including a sizeable number of rugby players. In total, some 125 rugby internationalists from the eight major playing nations would pay the ultimate price in service of their country. Among their number would be several British and Irish Lions, including 1904 captain Dr David Bedell-Sivright, Phil Waller, Eric Milroy and Blair Swannell, who was awarded a posthumous Military Cross for his gallantry at Gallipoli.

Yet perhaps the most extraordinary story of heroism by a Lion who toured in 1910 came some years after the war. Harry Jarman, a tough forward from Pontypool who played for Newport, sacrificed his own life to save a group of children at Talywain colliery in 1928. The children were playing on a colliery railway when Jarman, then working as a blacksmith at the pit, spotted some loose wagons heading for the youngsters. Without hesitation, he threw himself into the path of the wagons and derailed them, his consequent injuries proving fatal. Tackling a runaway train some 18 years after his tour, aged 45, and with nothing more than his own shoulders—in the long annals of their history, can there be any more outstanding example of the courage of a Lion?

When rugby returned to a sort of normality after the war, clamour grew for the British and Irish unions to send a touring party to the southern hemisphere again. The next tour would be to South Africa in 1924, and from then on the tourists would bear their immortal name, the Lions.

As with every other activity in the British Empire, after Armistice Day in 1918 the sport of rugby was determined to get back to its usual state as quickly as possible. In 1919, a team from the New Zealand forces triumphed against their opponents in Britain and stopped off to wallop several South African sides on the way home. The Springboks toured New Zealand and Australia in 1921, and the quality of their play was dazzling. But as in so many strands of life in Britain and Ireland, a return to prewar normality was just not possible for rugby in the home countries due to the colossal number of deaths and injuries sustained among a generation of young men.

The number of internationalists killed during the hostilities—30 from Scotland and 27 from England alone—shows the scale of the losses. The worldwide influenza epidemic after the war also took its toll. It was going to take a good few years for a new generation to come through to replace those who had gone.

The political situation in Ireland also caused problems. The 1920 partition of Ireland into the 26 counties of the Free State, later the Republic of Ireland, and the six counties of Northern Ireland, had been mirrored by rugby much earlier. In 1874, the Irish Football Union had been formed from clubs in Leinster, Munster and parts of Ulster, while the Northern Football Union of Ireland, founded in the same year, was an association of clubs centred mainly on Belfast. With Ireland still a single political entity under the control of Westminster at that time, the two associations amalgamated to form the Irish Rugby Football Union in 1879. When partition took place, the IRFU Committee resisted attempts to politicize rugby and took the decision—unpopular in some areas, too—that it would continue to govern the sport in all 32 counties. By and large, and despite many problems down the years, the IRFU has remained united in the cause of rugby for all of the island of Ireland. It remains an intriguing question, given the strong feelings that partition and subsequent ‘Troubles’ have evoked, as to whether the British and Irish Lions would have continued to represent all five nations in these islands had not the IRFU taken that momentous decision to stay united. Certainly, there would have been a lot less fun without all the Irish tourists.

Arguably the greatest damage done to rugby union and to the Lions tours in the inter-war years came from the Great Depression. Money was scarce from the early 1920s onwards, and most players simply could not afford to take months off work, while employers became increasingly reluctant to give even unpaid leave of absence as this meant holding a job open for someone who might return from a tour with a serious injury, which was often the case in years to come. Other players took the money on offer from rugby league and switched codes rather than pursue caps and a tour with the Lions, which was really the only ‘reward’ that rugby union had to offer.

When the Great Depression arrived from 1929 onwards, the situation worsened considerably, and not even a sport that was so resolutely middle-class in most areas of these islands could escape the ravages of economic turmoil. Less damage was done in the southern hemisphere, though in Australia the economic situation probably helped the professional version of the oval ball game, rugby league, to achieve the dominance over union which it still enjoys.

Another problem was that the home unions still did not take the concept of a touring team entirely seriously. Their bread and butter was the international championship, which largely earned the money to bankroll the unions—there were no formal leagues in those days, and no television riches, and the Five Nations matches were for a long time the principal earners of cash. No one had any money left over to invest in a tour that was still seen as a luxury.

These problems meant that in the 21 years between the wars, just three Lions tours took place, compared to four in eight years between 1903 and 1910 inclusive. The first post-war tour to South Africa in 1924 may have been disappointing in terms of results—they were the first tourists to have a win record of less than 50 per cent—but at least they did return with a priceless asset.

No one seems entirely sure where the name ‘Lions’ came from. The official branding of the 1924 party and indeed subsequent parties was the British Isles Rugby Union Team, or BIRUT. The biruts? Fortunately, some ties made for the tourists had been embroidered with three lions—a heraldic device that bears a strong resemblance to the badge of the English football (soccer) team.

The lions did not appear on the blue jerseys worn by the players in matches, and photographs quite clearly show that, for the 1924 Tests at any rate, the jersey badge was, as now, made up of the insignia of the four unions quartered on a shield. But the lions on the ties made an impression, and perhaps it was some bright spark in the party, maybe even the captain Dr Ronald Cove-Smith himself, who first suggested that the tourists were all lions. Or perhaps it was some long-forgotten press correspondent who wrote of ‘the lions’, and the name stuck, not least because it was so much better journalistically than ‘the biruts’.

Some officials in the various Celtic unions thought it was a bit presumptuous to use a symbol traditionally associated with England—Scotland’s single lion is rampant, not couchant. Protests were made by administrators, but, for once, player power counted. The newly minted Lions were not unhappy with the nickname, even those from Ireland and Wales, whose emblems were a shamrock and a dragon respectively. By the time the 1930 tour came round, the nickname was so well established that the blue playing jersey was embroidered with three lions, just like the English football badge, and players were given a plentiful supply of lion brooches and pins to hand out to their hosts.

Dr Cove-Smith’s Lions should have been the best ever to leave these islands. England had won the Grand Slam that year, their third in four seasons, and Scotland would do so the following year, and both those sides contained players who are now legends of the game. But in fact British and Irish rugby had fallen well behind the standards of the southern hemisphere teams, as would be proven when the All Blacks toured England, Wales, Ireland, France and Canada in late 1924 and early 1925, playing and winning four Tests and completing the 32-match tour unbeaten—hence their nickname of The Invincibles. The two tours overlapped slightly, but there was enough time between the final Test in South Africa and the Tests against the All Blacks for the Lions to arrive home and prepare themselves for another beating, this time in their own national colours rather than in the blue jersey of the British Isles Rugby Union Team.

On a tour that, at one point, saw the Lions go eight matches without a win, the South Africans were to hand out rugby lesson after rugby lesson. The touring party was missing great players like Wavell Wakefield—later the first Baron Wakefield of Kendal, and the father of modern forward play as well as captain of England’s Grand Slam winners—and G.P.S. ‘Phil’ Macpherson, who would skipper Scotland to their first Slam the following year. But that was no excuse, as the full squad of 30, which included two replacements, contained 24 past, current or future internationalists.

There were horrendous injury problems, however, many caused by the concrete-like surfaces of some of the South African pitches. Arthur Young, perhaps the finest scrum-half of the era and lynch-pin of England’s Grand Slam side, missed three of the Tests, while W.S. Gainsford was injured in the opening training session and sat out the entire tour. Ian Smith, the Australian-born Scottish winger who set an international record of 24 tries that stood until David Campese beat it, played only two Tests. Some players, such as Roy Kinnear—later a Scotland international and Great Britain rugby league cap, and father of the late well-known comic actor of the same name—managed to play in all four Tests, as did fellow Scottish cap Neil McPherson.

McPherson’s story is illuminating about the attitude of officialdom in those times. Though he was actually born in Wales, he qualified to play for Scotland because of his Scottish parentage, though this meant many long arduous trips north for the young man who played for Newport. He made the mistake, however, of accepting the gift of a watch worth 20 guineas to mark Newport’s unbeaten season in 1922–23, and when the gift was made public, the supposedly whiter-than-white Scottish union banned him from the international side.

In that 1924 party, Dan Drysdale, Doug Davies, Robert Howie, Arthur Blakiston, and Cove-Smith himself were the only other ever-presents in the four Tests. The first three would all play a vital part in Scotland’s 1925 Grand Slam, and Drysdale would later become president of the SRU, while Blakiston succeeded his baronet father and became Sir Arthur.

There was also no reliable goal kicker, and Scotland’s full-back Drys-dale had a miserable time missing what would now be considered certainties. In his defence, he had to play on while injured, the ball was much heavier in those days, and its flight high on the Veldt has baffled many more kickers than Drysdale. A forward, Tom Voyce of Gloucester and England, took over the kicking duties and fared little better. Voyce, who would become president of the RFU in later life, also had to play out of position in the backs, this happening several times as the Lions numbers were depleted. Willie Cunningham, an Irish international who had moved to live in Johannesburg, was called up as a replacement from ‘civilian’ life—as would happen to the accidental tourist, Andy Nicol, in Australia in 2001.

At one point in the match against the Border side in East London, the Lions were so desperate to make up numbers that a spectator called McTavish was pressed into action. Nothing more was known about him, and no more was ever heard about him, but there remains the intriguing possibility that out there somewhere are the descendants of an unacknowledged Lion.

Dr Cove-Smith admitted that the injuries had all but overwhelmed his squad. Later he wrote: ‘Looking back, one cannot help but laugh at the subterfuges to which we were forced to resort to place 15 fit men on the field, and I have marvelled many times in retrospect that the fellows were able to put up such a good show in spite of all the handicaps.’

The Lions were also caught out by what some considered a piece of trickery by the Springboks. In order to combat the dynamic wing forward play of the Lions, South Africa’s Test side lined up with a scrummage in a 3–4–1 formation, the wing forwards binding their support to props rather than the second row, as opposed to the traditional 3–2–3 system. The Lions refused to adopt the advantageous new formation and duly paid the price as the South African defence became even more formidable.

Forget these excuses, however. The fact is that the 1924 Lions were just not as good as their hosts, as the four Tests showed. The first Test at Durban saw the debut in the green jersey of the legendary fly-half Bennie Osler, one of the greatest of all Springboks. A prodigious kicker, Osler’s clearances from defence and his probing kicks in attack rendered many of the Lions strategies redundant. His drop goal was the difference between the two sides in that first Test, won 7–3 by the Springboks. ‘He kicked more than was warranted,’ was Cove-Smith’s later comment.

The second Test at Johannesburg was played in front of a crowd estimated at 25,000, of whom a large number had forced their way in after being locked out when the ground reached its supposed capacity of 15,000—there was no longer any doubt about the popularity of matches against the Lions. It was no tense affair, however, South Africa recording their biggest ever win by 17–0.

Having lost so heavily to the Springboks and having failed to beat no fewer than eight provincial sides, the Lions at least salvaged a draw in the third Test in Port Elizabeth. The series was lost, and insult was added to injury when the Springboks snatched victory with a late try in the final Test in Cape Town.

The humiliation was complete, and the knives were out for the tourists back home—in the polite terms of the day, it was suggested by various complainers that the host unions’ generous hospitality had helped the Lions rugby to reach a nadir. In other words, far too much drink had been taken.

W. Rowe Harding, the Welsh winger, later gave vent to his feelings about the tour and the Lions in general in his controversial book of 1929, Rugby Reminiscences and Opinions. ‘Many unkind things were said about our wining and dining, but that was not the explanation of our failures,’ he wrote, going on to blame instead the injuries, the long train journeys between venues and the hard grounds. But he then struck a more honest note.

It is not difficult to analyse the reason for our failure. Dissipation has nothing to do with it…the real reason for our failure was that we were not good enough to go abroad as the representatives of the playing strength of these islands.

It is not sufficient to send abroad some players who are of international standard and some who are second class. Every member of the team must be absolutely first class, or disaster is bound to overtake it.

Harding then slammed the home unions for not taking the tour or indeed the southern hemisphere nations seriously enough: ‘There has always been too much condescension by the British rugby authorities about our attitudes both to our continental neighbours and the colonies.’

Having retired from rugby the previous year to pursue his career in law, Harding was free to castigate his targets in officialdom. It did his legal career no harm—he later became a judge—but the frosty atmosphere when he encountered the ‘blazers’ of the committee rooms can only be imagined. Harding, whose great-nephews Sam and Tom played top-class rugby in their native New Zealand and in England, was a man ahead of his time, and the next tour in 1930, a year after his words were published, would prove him all too correct.

One footnote from that tour emerged in 2005, when a blue 1924 Lions jersey came up for auction, apparently the one exchanged with Alf Walker of the Springboks after the final Test Match. It was said to be in the same condition as it had been at the end of the match, though presumably it had been washed. The collar of the jersey was torn off—proof that the Springboks have never given any quarter.

At the time that the 1930 tour was agreed, the finest side of that international era was Scotland, with rugby in the Borders enjoying a purple patch. The Four Home Unions Committee, which was responsible for selecting the touring party, apparently contacted 100 players about their availability for the trip Down Under, and a fair number of invitees were Scottish. But it was a sign of the uncertain economic times that only one Scot, Willie Welsh of Hawick and Scotland, felt able to travel. The Committee’s first choice as captain, England’s Wavell Wakefield, was unable to tour, as was their second choice, Dr George Stephenson, then the most-capped player in the world, whose record of 14 tries for Ireland in home matches stood until a certain Brian O’Driscoll came along. Doug Prentice of Leicester and England eventually took up the captaincy, and clearly did a competent job of administration, as some years afterwards he became secretary of the RFU. He was not so successful as a player, and omitted himself from three Test teams.

The tour party still managed to comprise 29 players, of whom 11 were or would become England internationalists, with 6 Welsh caps, 5 Irish, plus Willie Welsh of Scotland. The star player was Welsh flanker Ivor Jones, who was nominated as ‘The King’ by the New Zealand press and public before Barry John was even born. Later president of the Welsh rugby union, Jones struck up a lifelong friendship with legendary opponent George Nepia.

Another Welshman who impressed his hosts was Jack Morley, who would return Down Under as a professional with the Great Britain rugby league tourists in 1936. Fly-half Roger Spong usually formed a great partnership for England with scrum-half Wilf Sobey, but the latter was badly injured in the first match of the tour and missed the remaining matches in which Spong nevertheless excelled.

Yet another of the touring internationalists was Carl D. Aarvold of Cambridge University and England, who later in life would be knighted and face opposition even tougher than the All Blacks—as Recorder of London he sat in judgement on the notorious gangster twins, the Krays. Other members of the party included Ireland’s George Beamish, a Royal Air Force pilot who later became Air Marshal Sir George Beamish, KBE, CBE, and Brian Black, who also became an RAF pilot and was killed in action in 1940.