Welcome to Rugby School Saturday, 29th November 2014

WELCOME TO RUGBY SCHOOL

It is a special pleasure to welcome Rugby School to Chesham Fields this afternoon for the first ever 15-a-side fixture block between the two schools. Naturally, I insisted that on this historic occasion the 1^st XV fixture should be played away at ‘School Close’, the location of that near-fabled moment in 1823 when William Webb Ellis ‘with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it’.

Rugby School, although founded in 1567 by Lawrence Sheriff, for many of us is associated with the 19^th Century. Its famous headmaster, Thomas Arnold, was an inspiration to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who resurrected the ancient Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. This might have amused Arnold, who was not particularly enthusiastic about sport, and only permitted it as an alternative to poaching, and fighting with the local boys. For Arnold religious and moral principle came first, gentlemanly conduct second, and academic ability third. Sport only became part of the curriculum in 1850, several years after Arnold’s death. Rugby under Arnold is also rightly famous as the setting for Thomas Hughes’ faintly autobiographical novel, ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ (1857), which portrays a generation of boys ’who feared the Doctor with all our hearts, and very little besides, in heaven or earth’. Arnold is a particular favourite of mine, since he founded much of his teaching on the Classics, on the grounds that ‘boys at a public school never will learn to speak or pronounce French well, under any circumstances’, so it would be enough if they could ‘learn it grammatically as a dead language’. Hughes’ novel also briefly features the anti-hero, Flashman, the school bully who is expelled for drunkenness, and whose later life is the subject-matter of the gloriously chauvinistic and politically incorrect ‘Flashman Papers’, by George MacDonald-Fraser, the first novel of which I read surreptitiously by torchlight as a fifteen-year-old, for which my brother blackmailed me for the best part of two years!

Commiserations to the U15A XV who on Thursday were just edged out in a thrilling tussle away at Bedford School (15-13) in the 5^th Round of the NatWest U15 Cup. It is never easy to referee a close game with much at stake, and both coaches were obliged to remind supporters of both sides at half-time to observe the established proprieties. If Schoolboy rugby ever becomes Sunday League Soccer, it is finished as the game we know and love, and respect for the referee, opposition players and spectators lies at the heart of the game. We all need to remember our responsibilities to the game.

Remaining fixtures:

Hertfordshire U14 Cup Semi-Final:

U14A XV              v              Bishop’s Stortford HS (h)              Weds, 3^rd Dec                    2.15pm

Final Regular School Fixture:

1^st XV                     v              St Paul’s School, Barnes (a)          Sat, 6^th Dec                          2.15pm

NatWest U18 Cup Round 6:

1^st XV                     v              Trinity Croydon (a)                          Weds, 10^th Dec                  2.30pm

Dick Mowbray, Master i/c Rugby.

Berkhamsted v Merchant Taylors' 15.11.2014 Programme Notes

It gives me great pleasure to welcome our friends from Merchant Taylors’ School to Chesham Rd this morning. Within the last few days at Berkhamsted we have been entertaining the MTS Oxbridge applicants to a reciprocal series of practice interviews. Some of the boys may even be playing today. There was a time when Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall was required reading for anyone with Oxbridge pretensions, in the confident anticipation of three years of dissolution and self-indulgence. The book begins with the resurrection dinner of the ‘Boller Club’ at ‘Scone College, Oxford’ after an extended ban, and progresses to the disaster that overwhelms one of life’s innocents that evening on his return from reading a paper to the Theological Society. The poor chap finds himself ‘sent down’ for gross moral turpitude, with a career as a schoolmaster in Wales his only recourse.

The recently retired Headmaster of MTS and I were friends and contemporaries at Queens’ in the late 1970s, and fellow members of a social club of what we probably both now regard as pretentious notoriety, pale when set against the lurid colours of the ‘Boller Club’, but the fact that we both ended up as schoolmasters some may see as some sort of cautionary tale. ‘Mr Pennyfeather,’ begins the Headmaster, on interviewing the ingénu,’I have been acquainted with the scholastic profession for long enough to know that no-one ever enters it…unless he has a very good reason…which he wishes to conceal.’ So be warned, all you thrustingly ambitious, would-be Oxbridge scholars, reaching out for the glittering prizes: it still could all go horribly wrong!

Since we are in the month of ‘Movember’, I thought I would share with you a photograph of Steve and myself in a ‘Kangaroo Club’ photo of the late 1970s. It was not a good decade for fashion, it is true, but we both had some hair and were both a few pounds lighter.  

                                                            

But I digress. This is always a fiercely-contested, but mutually respectful, fixture between long-standing opponents. Berkhamsted have won the last couple convincingly, but the record over the last 50 years is remarkably even. This is one of our most valued fixtures, and I trust that all the teams will play in a manner that befits a fixture of such longevity between two fine schools.

Our referee today is Niamh Hennessy who refereed the opening game of the season against St Albans. I recall she had to dash off to a wedding reception that day, so I hope she will have time today to enjoy some typical Berkhamsted post-match hospitality.

Dick Mowbray,

Master i/c Rugby

Berkhamsted.

Chile Argentina Rugby Tour 2014

CHILE ARGENTINA RUGBY TOUR 2014


OPPONENTS                                           SENIOR SQUAD       DEVELOPMENT XV
Mackay School, Vina del Mar                  Lost 10-16                  Won 36-25
Craighouse, Santiago                                Won 32-10                   Lost 7-41
Orchard College, Curico                           Won 45-5                    Won 48-0
Los Tordos RFC, Mendoza                       Won 21-12                  Drew 17-17
Rosario Athletic Club RFC                       Lost 12-31
Colegio San Albano, Buenos Aires          Lost 13-20                   Won 41-5


The Senior Squad (1st XV): Matt Pugh (Tour Captain), Alex Brown, Tom Day, Tom Daffern, Scott Duguid, George Dunn, Tom ffitch, Charlie Gilhooley, Oliver Green, Oliver Holdroyd, Will Hughes, Joe Lucas, Alexander Luck, Peter McCall Casey O’Gorman, Matt Phillipson, Timi Sanusi, Oliver Storey,Jonny Thomas-Davies, Ed Tidey and Ali Walters.


The Development Squad: Tom Mills (Capt), Chris Allen, Hamish Blackwood, James Campion, George Carter, Alex Dodd, George Fearn, Jack Fosberry, Stuart Frame, Alex Green, Oliver Haigh, Matt Harris, Daniel Hill, David Hughes, Ed Leane, Nathan Misan, Hugo O’Grady, Hamish Percy, Jack Richardson and Nic Tivey.


Staff: Dick Mowbray (Tour Manager), Ben Mahoney (Senior Squad Coach), George Campbell (Senior Squad Assistant Coach), David Gibson (Development Squad Coach), Nick Cale (Development Squad Assistant Coach).


This was the School’s fifth long-haul tour to the southern hemisphere in the last twenty years, following those to South Africa in 1996 and 2010, New Zealand and Fiji in 2002, and Argentina in 2006. Travel is one of life’s great privileges and we are a generation privileged like no other in the relative ease with which we can transport ourselves to the other side of the world. Teaching is another such great privilege, and to be able to combine the two is special. Rugby, too, has a rich tradition of fellowship and hospitality, and, as important as the results seem at the time, as is the opportunity to focus collective and individual endeavour on a common goal of excellence, it is the friendships made which are the lasting legacy of touring. Rugby is a common language, which is just as well, since the Head of Modern Languages clearly was of the opinion that an admission that he couldn’t speak a word of Spanish might preclude an invitation to tour! The language of rugby transcends cultural idiosyncracies and unites people whom politics, history and circumstance on occasions may have set at odds. Looking back, triumph and disaster, on the rugby field at least, are certainly Kipling’s ‘twin imposters’. South America is a continent to some extent neglected by Europeans. Chile feels itself a country neglected by South America. Squeezed in between a vast ocean and the longest mountain range on earth, Chile is 2600 miles long and never more than 110 miles wide. It is a thin country, cut-off from the rest of the continent. It has long-established ties with Britain. Our children growing up today are taught to be embarrassed about our imperial past and think the practical skills of mechanical engineering are beneath their dignity. One only has to travel beyond Europe to witness the immense ambition and reach of 19th Century Britain. Nowhere is this clearer than in Chile and Argentina where Britain built the railways and left the legacy of its schools. Both Mackay and Craighouse have Scottish founders and celebrate many of the virtues associated with Britain’s Public Schools. 50% of their curriculum is taught in English, their headmasters are British. Their teachers are bilingual and are often sourced from Britain, and if we thought for a moment their rugby would be a soft-touch, we were quickly disabused of that notion. In South America they like their men to be men, and where better than to show this than on the rugby pitch? Our fixtures with Mackay began in the clear light of day and finished under lights as the night descended and the mist rolled in with the Pacific breakers 400m away. As conditions deteriorated, the senior contest became less a test of skill than of character, and, let’s be honest, in these virtues we came second. Mackay’s ferocity in the tackle and in the loose turned the game on its head, and it was a rude awakening. Two years ago Craighouse tired of the constraints of its city location in Santiago and ‘upped sticks’ to the mountains north of the city. The potential is enormous. The rugby set-up is exemplary. Most Chilean rugby, unlike in Argentina, is in the schools, and Craighouse is one of the top five in Chile. They won three national sevens tournaments at different age-levels last year. Within the last two years they have beaten Stowe and Mill Hill in Santiago, and Rugby and (just recently) Oakham on tour in England. Their U16 side is exceptional by any standards: skilful, athletic, powerful, dynamic and well-drilled. We scored one superb try of our own and bravely limited them to two second-half tries, but were well beaten. Our 1st XV (senior squad), chastened by their experience at Mackay, were magnificent against a very good side. Our defensive line-speed put them under tremendous pressure and forced a catalogue of handling errors. Tom ffitch’s game management was outstanding. We had rested him against Mackay, owing to a slight strain. Here he scored an early try after a ‘show and go’ and hammered the concluding nail into Craighouse’s coffin with a characteristically outrageous interception after the opposition threatened an overlap. However, this was a very pleasing team-performance, particularly in defence, which was simply brutal. The party then de-camped three hours south to Curico, the Garden of Chile, fecund with vineyards, fruit and vegetables. The soil is volcanic and therefore fertile, and the rainfall much heavier than Santiago. The boys were hosted hospitably and heartily. The staff enjoyed a three-month-old suckling piglet, which the Tour Manager was invited to decapitate with the edge of a plate to demonstrate its tenderness (it had been marinaded for several weeks). We were treated to a traditional folk-dance before the game. Sadly and erroneously, the Tour Manager, when invited after a demonstration to follow suit, identified non-existent parallels with Morris Dancing, which did little for his street credibility with the boys of both sides. Orchard College, our appropriately named opposition, has barely existed for twenty years, and is a very small school, but they competed ferociously (surprise, surprise) and courageously, and we had to make full use of our better unit skills to beat them. Both games were more competitive than the scores suggest. We were privileged to have met such wonderful people: twenty students will be coming to England on a cultural visit early next academic year, when we will have the opportunity to repay their hospitality. In Argentina, conversely, with one or two notable exceptions, the rugby is principally in the clubs. After a magnificent flight across the Andes and the highest mountain in the southern hemisphere, Aconcagua, we arrived in Mendoza, the home of 96% of the world’s Malbec. In Argentina no-one grows up wanting to play in the three-quarters, or even the back five of the scrum. A diet exclusively confined to red meat, but for a token lettuce leaf, is designed to produce front-row forwards of considerable girth and commensurate aggression. We were not disappointed in anticipation of two ferocious games and escaped serious injury, but for some expensive cosmetic repair to James Campion’s mouth. The post-match clubhouse was a steak-fueled riot of bonhomie and good cheer. David Gibson’s tour ‘coat of shame’ was the source of great mirth. Originally designed for a smaller man on a sevens tour, its pink and yellow silks were an irresistible temptation for some behemoths of Puma folklore who appeared out of the committee room to test the flexibility of its seams, insisting to a man it was a perfect fit. The Tour Manager, potentially unwisely, saw that the mood was right to explore in broken Spanish some of the subtler arguments relating to the disputed sovereignty of the Malvinas. Strangely, these were met with receptive ears, much back-slapping ensued, and the party was dispatched safely on its overnight coach journey to Rosario. In the cold light of day, that could have gone badly wrong! Rosario Athletic Club is a wonderful relic of English colonialism where cricket and hockey are also played. The committee stalwarts are acutely aware of their responsibilities to history and are building an exquisite archive. We were presented with a recently written limited-edition history of the club and shown many of its memorabilia, though none of the collateral damage of Will Carling’s near-disastrous England tour of 1990. The club was founded by an English masonic lodge and still bears its colours. Two plaques recall the sacrifice of the dozens of club members who volunteered to fight for the allies in two wars, largely but not exclusively, on the other side of the world. We gained some understanding of the appalling cleft stick in which these lovely people found themselves during the emotion of the Malvinas conflict of 1982. The rugby thereafter seemed likely to be something of a sideshow, but the boys of both sides thought otherwise and produced a magnificent game. Over twenty-five members of the two squads played, but it was a good opportunity to rest some of the players who had played virtually every minute of every game hitherto, as well as those carrying knocks. After the first two periods of 25 mins, we were 12 nil up and congratulating ourselves on the effectiveness of our defence thus far on the tour. At this point the dam wall caved in and we could not live with the high tempo of the opposition’s game. Although disappointed, we had to congratulate the opposition on the power, pace and skill of their play, as well as the subtleties of selection which had made a game of it until the final tsunami swept away all in its path. The final game against Colegio San Albano was against old friends who had toured England in 2011. Wonderful friendships were resumed. The hospitality defied belief: our tour interrupted their Speech Day, but to accommodate us the games were brought forward to earlier in the day and the hospitality began at midnight, concluding at 6am, with School resuming at 9am, but not before a cordial goodbye at the School gates. San Albano had gone unbeaten and this was their final game, in which they staked all. It was a close-run thing and a disappointing result for the 1st XV, but the better side won: they defended their line, often under fearsome pressure, and, above all, took their chances. The Development XV had a comfortable win. San Albano will tour again in 2015. The hospitality we enjoyed will be a difficult act to follow. This tour was the perfect preparation for the season to come. As I write, at Half-Term, the 1st XV have built on the lessons learnt and have ‘hit the ground running’. There has been a successful pre-season tournament at Macclesfield, with a solitary defeat to a very strong Leeds GS, and an unbeaten regular season thus far. To this extent the tour has fulfilled its role in terms of development, but we have all come back with richer life experience, greater cultural awareness, and lasting friendships which transcend the petty politics of a misplaced sense of nationhood. As we pass one another around school there is the quiet smile of shared experience. Most of us at one time or another found ourselves wearing Gibbo’s ‘coat of shame’ and, it bears silent and now ragged witness to all our follies. But therein lie several other stories…
Dick Mowbray, Master i/c Rugby.