From The Vaults

14 March 2022

Le Crunch, Old Gaytonians, PLESSIS MEUDON and 60 years of sporting frivolity by Connor Dickins

Connor Dickins explores the 60-year relationship that epitomised England v France…

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14 March 2022

Le Crunch, Old Gaytonians, PLESSIS MEUDON and 60 years of sporting frivolity by Connor Dickins

Connor Dickins explores the 60-year relationship that epitomised England v France…

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20 December 2021

Bringing Rugby History To Life For Children

Rugby author James Stafford chats with us about his new book ‘How Wales Beat the Mighty All Blacks’ and his mission to bring rugby history to life for readers of all ages.

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30 August 2021

Cardiff Arms Park - An Architectural and Social History

This August sees the publication of a new history of Cardiff Arms Park, telling the story of its evolution from a pre-sporting public space to the home of the current national and club grounds.

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23 August 2021

A Game Of Poetry

Vane Ihe (41 years old) has been attending Otautahi Creative Spaces since 2017 and has been writing poetry since he was 18. Vane has written over 200 poems, one of which was for New Zealand's Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.

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03 May 2021

New book documenting the history of rugby in East Germany

In 1948, Erwin Thiesies, a former German national player, moved from Berlin to Hennigsdorf, an industrial city with a steelworks in the north of Berlin. He gathered schoolboys around him and introduced them to rugby.

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26 April 2021

The One and Only Whistle

When JD Dallas blew his whistle for a scrum, not a try, in 1905, he ignited a dispute that continues to this day. Here, in his own words, he seeks to set the record straight...

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12 April 2021

The Cavaliers tour of South Africa 1986

The rivalry between the New Zealand All Blacks and the South African Springboks had been intense ever since their first meeting in 1921. The generation of leading players in the mid-1980s were almost without exception keen for that rivalry to continue despite the growing public awareness of the injustices that were occurring daily in apartheid South Africa.

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25 March 2021

Spotlight on Raeburn Place

It all began at Raeburn Place on March 27th, 1871, when an English Twenty arrived to meet the challenge of Scottish footballers. A series of ‘international football’ matches had taken place in 1870 and 1871 but none of them has satisfied the Scottish sporting public, firstly because the players selected to represent them were local to London not Scotland and secondly because they were playing the wrong football.

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08 March 2021

Give it to the Hooker!

Last year's Autumn Nations Cup produced some ground-breaking moments. Introduced to cover the gap caused by the Covid pandemic in 2020 which closed sports stadiums for long periods to all but a very few spectators, these matches in the northern hemisphere aroused both interest and controversy among TV viewers and pundits.

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20 July 2020

The Original Brave Blossom

A few weeks before the last year's Rugby World Cup, an article was posted on a website of Kyoto Shimbun (newspaper). The story featured Ishi Fukui, a woman who ran a sporting goods business from 1922 in Kyoto.

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06 July 2020

I remember when I managed the All Blacks...

Twickenham Stadium Tour Guide John tells the story of the weekend he "managed" the All Blacks...

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21 May 2020

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and His Passion for Rugby

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle invented one of the best loved literary characters in history – Sherlock Holmes...it is interesting to now revisit the tales and uncover his frequent and unmissable references to sport – and in particular, the game of rugby.

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