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 1st 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 19th 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 5th 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, 3rd
Dec 2.15pm
Final Regular School Fixture:
1st XV v St Paul’s School, Barnes (a) Sat, 6th Dec 2.15pm
NatWest U18 Cup Round 6:
1st XV v Trinity Croydon (a) Weds,
10th Dec 2.30pm
Dick Mowbray, Master i/c Rugby.
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