From The Vaults

18 May 2020

Portrait of a Team - the Sunderland Football Club XV of 1881

In 1881 Sunderland Football Club was victorious in the first ever Durham County Cup...As luck would have it the final was played on 26 March and the census information for 1881 was gathered eight days after the game, affording us a remarkable opportunity of discovering what kind of people were playing...

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18 May 2020

Portrait of a Team - the Sunderland Football Club XV of 1881

In 1881 Sunderland Football Club was victorious in the first ever Durham County Cup...As luck would have it the final was played on 26 March and the census information for 1881 was gathered eight days after the game, affording us a remarkable opportunity of discovering what kind of people were playing...

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14 May 2020

"How Newport Won the Springbok's Head"

When the South Africans came to Britain in 1912, under the captaincy of W. A. Millar, they brought with them a stuffed Springbok’s Head, to be presented to the team who first defeated them. They had the trophy with them at Newport on October 24th: it went no farther, for they were unexpectedly beaten...

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02 December 2019

War Games: Rugby in 1939

Extracted from Howard Evans and Phil Atkinson’s 'War Games: Rugby Union during the Second World War'

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14 October 2019

'Sunderland Rugger with a Dash of Schoolboy Rugby Beyond'

Keith Gregson reports on one town’s efforts to rebuild rugby after the First World War...

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29 July 2019

Hartlepool's Rugby History

Since RWC 2015 and as part of the “Impact Beyond 2015” initiative, the Hartlepool & District RFU has been engaged with the Hartlepool Museums and Library Services in cataloguing a large collection of Rugby ephemera dating between the 1870s and 1924...

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27 May 2019

Kent v Sussex 1866 - the world's first representative match?

John Honeysett's recent book 'The History of Brighton Football Club (Rugby Union)' provides a shake-up for established rugby historical orthodoxies. Amongst a number of claims is that Kent and Sussex contested the first county match in 1866, four years before Lancashire met Yorkshire for the first time in what is believed to have been the first representative match of any kind. Here John explains...

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20 May 2019

Old and New - a look at the changing nature of rugby committees, by Keith Gregson

Sunderland RFC’s historian Keith Gregson gives pause for thought about rugby club committees – past and present...

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13 May 2019

Who is Eric Bole?

Who is Eric Bole? During the 1940s, he was an English rugby player of outstanding ability—profiled in 1945 by The Times as “a forward of high promise”—and yet, he never managed to earn his international cap for England...

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06 May 2019

Richmond FC at War

When we talk about our playing days we casually throw out words which suggest we were engaged in a sort of warfare, but for an awful lot of our predecessors at Richmond Football Club the words had a harsh and vivid reality...

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22 April 2019

Thomas Cook’s Rugby Club

The book, Thomas Cook’s Rugby Club 1910-1966, tells the story about the life and times of the illustrious travel firm and its rugger club...

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07 January 2019

The Longest Kick in Rugby Football

Some kicks seem to have been destined for immortality be they penalty goals, drop goals or the now long forgotten scoring device called goals from a mark...

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17 December 2018

The Rugby Club that Volunteered

Keith Gregson, Sunderland RFC’s archivist and historian has, through a combination of knowledge, effort and luck, pieced together the wartime records of all 45 rugby players who were selected to play for Sunderland RFC 1st, 2nd and 3rd XVs on 17 January 1914 – just over 6 months before the outbreak of the First World War. This is an abridged introduction to the full work, which is available to purchase.

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