This article is a continuation of Keith Gregson's
'The Plight of the Northern
Amateur'.
Durham county team, 1905
Attendance One of the main arguments for a
league system had been that it might improve attendance and, in
consequence, income. This is not an easy area to deal with due a
lack of conclusive evidence. In terms of crowd size, press reports
were wont to use positive phrases such as a 'large attendance' at
the Durham City v Sunderland 1st XV match in October
1907 and 'a fairly large gathering' for the Sunderland v Winlaton
Vulcans 1st XV match in November. At the other end of
the scale less positive descriptions such as 'dwindling interest',
'meagre attendance' and 'moderate company' were used of other
1st XV league games. Only on a couple of occasions did
actual crowd size appear in press reports. There was considerable
disappointment at a turnout of only 600 for the West Hartlepool v
Sunderland 1st XV league match although the crowd of around 3,000
mentioned by a number of sources for the Hartlepool Rovers v
Sunderland 1st XV league match was greeted with approval. However
due to frost the latter game was the only one being played in the
region on that day which may explain the good turnout.
The difficulty of judging crowd size and resultant income can be
seen in the case of Sunderland SRFC and its modus operandi. At the
end of September 1907, the Sunderland Echo reported a
paying public of 16 for a rugby league match at Sunderland,
considered to be 'probably the smallest on record for a first team
fixture on the ground'. The income from the paying public was five
shillings and sixpence which included one payment of one shilling
and sixpence for upgrading from the ground to the stand. However
the reporter continued to note the side ('a good one') was 'well
supported by members'. In the case of cricket and rugby, membership
of the Sunderland Cricket and Football Club brought with it free
entry to games. To some extent such membership may be regarded as a
form of season ticket and does cause problems when it comes to
calculating attendances and match day income. The reporter for the
September match put the low paying gate down to the Sunderland AFC
home fixture and it is clear that by 1907/8 the rugby union league
system in the north east was not challenging the local domination
of association football. Early in the season, Touch Judge in the
Evening Chronicle expressed the fear that 'the Association
code' was 'on the march' in the Hartlepools - a bastion of rugby if
there ever was one. This 'dribbling code' was seen as responsible
for the small crowd in attendance at a pre-season friendly between
West Hartlepool and Castleford which made the writer wonder 'how
they got going at Hartlepool'. Granted that the West Hartlepool v
Castleford game was a friendly, a rugby league fixture was usually
poorly attended if one of the big local association clubs was
playing at home on the same day.
Leagues and professionalism Perhaps the
greatest fear of the RFU was that leagues would lead to underhand
payment of players and eventually to full blown professionalism. If
it was carried out subtly, this kind of payment can be difficult
for an historian to detect and it will always remain a possibility
that there were payments and that no record of these was ever kept.
This noted, the evidence available currently suggests little in the
way of payment of players. A detailed examination of the records of
the Sunderland RFC indicates that the club was so short of funds at
one point that the 1st XV players agreed to pay their own travel
expenses in order to keep the club afloat. Committee members here
were strongly opposed to joining the breakaway Northern Union in
1895 and eventually overcame any efforts to move the club to the
association code. Minute after minute during this period suggests
that one of the main reasons was a desire to avoid professional
sport. The journalists who covered rugby in the local press also
made a stout defence of the amateur code. Early in the 1907/8
season, Winlaton Vulcans opened a new stand to great acclaim.
Colonel Napier-Clavering who had helped to sponsor the building of
the stand commented at its opening, 'no game brought out the true
nature of a man than Rugby football; nor did he know of any that
taught a man discipline, self-restraint and courage as well as it
did'. Touch Judge, writing in the Evening Chronicle,
concurred and in all his early season's jottings averred that this
nature was to be seen at its best in the amateur game. He followed
with interest the battle going on for the soul of Welsh rugby and
noted gleefully the failures of the visiting All Black professional
side as it took on the clubs in the Northern Union. This led him to
note that 'none of the Welsh' activities were to be seen in his
area and that the professional side of the game had been 'swallowed
up by the Northern Union wave'. At the same time, Touch Judge also
approved of a place for 'honest professionalism' despite his
preference for the amateur game where 'men played for the love of
it and the benefit they derive from it'. What he really objected to
was 'the half-and-half-business', i.e. the 'boot money' which had
led eventually led to 1895 divide. Nowhere in any of his writing
does he suggest that such a business existed in any shape or form
in the clubs involved in the north east leagues. Time
Keeping There is little evidence of this at Sunderland RFC
in 1907/8 and less still that the league system triggered rising
gates or significantly increased income for the clubs involved in
the system. One change however lay in an improvement in punctuality
- something already hinted at in earlier league-related records of
Sunderland RFC. With reference to an early season league game
between Durham City and Percy Park, one correspondent noted;
'Another welcome improvement is the good time now kept.
On Saturday a start was made prompt to advertised time and those
who, following old customs, came down twenty minutes later, were
surprised to find the game nearly half over. This is bound to make
for increased interest in the game, and I hope every care will be
taken to maintain it'.
Elsewhere it was noted that until fairly recently, a waiting
time of fifteen minutes had been the order of the day. If the
league system brought a little more discipline into the game in
terms of starting times, it may also have brought in a little too
much indiscipline as competition grew. In a league match between
West Hartlepool and Westoe, there was crowd trouble and two
dismissals. The rugby reporter for the Hartlepools' based Northern
Daily Mail was annoyed by this. 'Bah!' he wrote 'The whole thing is
beyond contempt'. He suggested that the internal committees of the
clubs should be proactive in stopping such activity and concluded,
'much as they value the possession of the league flag' they should
'rather let it go into oblivion than that the traditions of their
glorious club should be dragged through the mire'. Occasionally the
set time for a match starting passed by without success. The match
between Sunderland and Winlaton Vulcans, for example ended 'in
semi-darkness' due to the late arrival of the away teams baggage.
This late arrival is indicative of an 'amateurish' approach to the
game which is also reflected in player turn out especially in the
junior sides. In the case of Gilesgate;
'The reason why Gilesgate did not fulfil their
engagement with Ashington was not because of lack of funds as I
stated but because of the indifference of some of their
players'
Throughout the season there were also signs that the pit village
side Hamsteels was struggling to put out a team and a Sunderland
2nd XV fixture with Percy Park had to be downgraded to a friendly
because the home team did not have 15 players. On another occasion,
Sunderland's 3rd XV played against 13 of a Durham side at Ashbrooke
and that included two borrowed Sunderland players.
Perhaps the most telling in this sphere was 'a complaint from
West Hartlepool' about 'the frequency with which visiting clubs
send incomplete teams to keep Inter County Club Championship
engagements'. Westoe came with only ten men and were loaned two but
twelve against fifteen 'aroused little interest amongst the
spectator'. As county games were of considerable importance, they
tended to weaken the better league sides considerably causing the
kind of dissatisfaction now experienced by professional rugby union
sides during the Six Nations international season. All in all, an
amateur approach to league rugby appears to have held sway. Little
happened in Sunderland until the cricket season was over and even
after the start of the rugby season 'not all players had yet
answered the call' while 'others' were 'as yet unfit'. Training did
not commence until the Tuesday before the first league match As
Touch Judge remarked;
'Rugbeians do not rush into play on the first available
day as do the devotees of the Association code, and so long as the
game is played on the same amateur lines as at present they will
never do so'.
Conclusion The rising challenge of association
football in the north east of England clearly jolted rugby clubs at
all levels into action based, as a bottom line, on sheer
self-preservation. The fact that the vast majority of clubs which
took part in the exercise are still playing today may be proof of
some form of success.
About the Author: Keith Gregson is
a Sunderland-based semi-retired freelance writer, historian and
musician. He has written numerous books about the history of sport
including 'One Among Many', 'Sporting Ancestors' and 'Australia in
Sunderland'. Details of his work can be found at keithgregson.com and his books can
be purchased from Amazon.
