Scotland v Wales, 1901
Triple-Triple Crown winner, hardest man ever to play for
Scotland, horse-wrestling captain of the British Lions, heavyweight
boxing champion, pioneer of the wing-forward role, jackaroo and
surgeon in the Royal Navy. David Bedell Sivright was a man of many
parts, and most of those parts relished physical confrontation.
Many stories attach themselves to Bedell Sivright, and fact may be
hard to distinguish from fiction, but he was unquestionably one of
the outstanding players of his day. He remains the only person to
have won three Triple Crowns with Scotland. He captained both his
national side and the British Lions, with whom he toured twice.
1904 British and Irish Lions whom Bedell-Sivright (centre
middle-row) captained
Legend states that, following an international match, Bedell
Sivright held up the Edinburgh traffic while he wrestled with a
cart horse, with the police not daring to intervene. It is
certainly true that he ordered his Lions team to leave the field
for 20 minutes while he disputed the referee's decision to send off
one of his players. Bedell Sivright was serving in the Dardanelles
campaign when, like war poet and fellow rugby player Rupert Brooke,
he contracted septicaemia from an insect bite. He died on 5
September 1915.
This article is an extract from the World Rugby
Museum special exhibition 'Lest We Forget' which recalls the
sacrifices of men such as David Bedell-Sivright and others around
the world who fought and died in the First World War. Please
like the World Rugby Museum on
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international rugby players who fell in the Great War.
