From The Vaults

10 June 2019

After the War: The Victory Internationals, 1945-46

With the onset of the Second World War, official international rugby was put on hiatus in 1939. After the war ended in 1945, there was one season before fixtures officially resumed and it was in this period that the Victory Internationals were played to fill the void…

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10 June 2019

After the War: The Victory Internationals, 1945-46

With the onset of the Second World War, official international rugby was put on hiatus in 1939. After the war ended in 1945, there was one season before fixtures officially resumed and it was in this period that the Victory Internationals were played to fill the void…

06 June 2019

Remembering Bob Weighill

Remembering Bob Weighill, the England captain who helped pave the way for the Normandy landings...

03 June 2019

Historic Rugby Internationals: Scotland v England, 1925

Scotland’s fourth and final match in the 1925 International Championship on March 21st has gone down in rugby history as one of the greatest matches played between the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century...

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...

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...

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...

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...

29 April 2019

Historic Rugby Internationals: South Africa v British Isles, 1974

Rugby history beckoned at Ellis Park, Johannesburg on Saturday July 27th 1974. The British Lions were playing the 22nd and final match of their tour and they had won all their previous matches...

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...

16 April 2019

The 1919 Rugby World Cup Final...

A century ago, in this deciding clash for George V’s King’s Cup, could the Mother Country reverse their earlier defeat by New Zealand, or would the men from 12,000 miles away maintain their edge and build on the winning reputation they and their countrymen had built over the previous fifteen years?

09 April 2019

Play-offs loom in the 1919 King's Cup...

The Services teams from Down Under finally clashed at Bradford after a snow-postponement, and the against-the-odds Aussie win helped the Mother Country in their hopes of forcing a play-off for the 1919 Kings Cup…

05 April 2019

1919 King's Cup tournament draws towards its climax...

As the King’s Cup tournament of 1919 drew towards its climax, the Mother Country and New Zealand travelled north of the border to Edinburgh’s Inverleith, for what turned out to be a terrific foretaste of the eventual final and produced the ‘Storey’ of the day…

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