From The Vaults

16 January 2017

How to research and write a club history by Keith Gregson

Writer and historian Keith Gregson uses his experiences in researching Sunderland Rugby Club's past to open a debate on writing rugby club histories.

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16 January 2017

How to research and write a club history by Keith Gregson

Writer and historian Keith Gregson uses his experiences in researching Sunderland Rugby Club's past to open a debate on writing rugby club histories.

07 January 2017

Death of a Forward

The Tragic First World War tale of Sunderland Rugby Football Club's James Harry Edwards (1894 -1917) puts the First World War into sharp focus.

31 October 2016

How the city of Bradford helped shape the early history of Rugby Football

Ask a rugby enthusiast to name the traditional giants of English rugby and the chances are that Bradford would not come to mind. Yet immediately prior to the 1895 split, the Park Avenue club was considered alongside Newport and Blackheath as one of the leading sides in the British Isles.

17 October 2016

The Gould Case

The following is an extract from 'One Among Many: the Story of Sunderland Rugby Football Club' by Keith Gregson.

26 September 2016

Durham County Diamond Jubilee 1936

The following is an extract from 'One Among Many: the Story of Sunderland Rugby Football Club' by Keith Gregson. "Of the many stirring rugby events at Ashbrooke, none aroused greater interest than the match played 26 September 1936"

08 May 2016

From the Deep Vaults...

James Corsan is currently working on a Harlequins Heritage project in connection with the forthcoming 150th anniversary of the founding of the club.

23 April 2016

150 years of the Glasgow Accies...

Founded on 21st April, 1866 at a meeting held at the Glasgow Academy in Elmbank Street, the Academical Club played its first recorded football match, against West of Scotland FC, in January 1868 at Hamilton Crescent.

10 April 2016

Young Americans by Stephen Cooper

Barely weeks after the first English Premiership rugby game played in New Jersey, USA by Saracens and London Irish, new evidence has emerged from a club's archives of early American rugby connections in England.

05 April 2016

Back to School - the origins of football and rugby

There were at least seven schools playing their own versions of what was known as 'football' in the early years of the 19th century.

12 January 2016

Who's in the plates? Sporting intrigue at Devizes Flea Market

The following conversation took place in the local flea market in Devizes one Tuesday morning.

11 November 2015

A History of the Bristol Memorial Ground

The Memorial Ground was built for the Bristol Rugby Club, and is now the home of Bristol Rovers Football Club. Next year, the city's Ceremony of Remembrance is to be held at the war memorial stadium.

29 September 2015

An American rugby pioneer in China - Henry Bluett Liversedge

Liversedge, nicknamed 'the Horse', had a huge influence on the rugby scene in China in the late 1920s, his legacy continued in Shanghai through to 1940. Born in California in 1894, he was a freshman at the University of California in 1914. During his first year, rugby was the football of choice on the west coast of America.