George Hastings
Versatile, goal-kicking prop forward ahead of his time who won the Grand Slam with England
GEORGE HASTINGS, who has died aged 95, won 13 caps for England as a mobile prop forward who could run, pass and kick with a versatility that was said by a fellow international – with only a touch of exaggeration – to be “50 years ahead of his time”; in two of his three seasons in the side England won a Grand Slam and a Five Nations championship.
Unusually, perhaps even uniquely for a prop forward, he kicked an equalising penalty in the dying minutes of a game against Scotland at Murrayfield in 1958 that won the championship for England. Despite that, however, he never played for his country again.
When he was first selected for England in 1955, the rugby correspondent of The Times wrote: “As a lusty forward he is well worth his place, but is not everyone’s idea of a front-row prop forward.” In those days the job of a prop was not to run with the ball but to be strong enough in the scrum to overpower his opposite number and to be a master of the dark arts in the mostly undetected thuggery that was an accepted part of the game.
Peter Ford, a former England flanker who played with him for Gloucester, said Hastings did not enjoy the scrummaging so much as trying to make the game flow. “He was a very modern player in that respect, relishing open play.”
He missed out on the Five Nations championship in 1956, but regained his place in 1957 – when England won the Grand Slam – and 1958. England won eight, lost two and drew three of his 13 international matches. He scored a try against Ireland in Dublin and kicked two penalty goals and a conversion. When he retired The
Times wrote that “CR Jacobs and GW Hastings helped to form the best front row England have had since the war.”
George William Hastings was born on November 7 1924 at Dursley, halfway between Gloucester and Bristol, in the southern Cotswolds, where his father was a policeman. The family, including George’s elder sister, moved to Cheltenham when their father retired as an inspector. George was educated at Cheltenham Grammar School where, surprisingly, he failed to make the first XV.
He played rugby for the Old Patesians, then for Cheltenham, as a wing forward. When he appeared against Gloucester in 1947, the Cherry and Whites recruited him and played him four days later against Cardiff, putting him in the second row of the scrum. He then did National Service, playing for an Army XV in Egypt, before returning to Gloucester in 1949.
He played 260 games for the club, which he captained in the 1954-55 season, and scored 30 tries, an exceptionally high figure for a prop forward. He also played 34 times for Gloucestershire, for Western Counties against the All Blacks in 1953 and for a winning England team against Australia in 1958.
In his last game for Gloucester, in 1959, he played at No8, having covered all three rows of the scrum. Although mainly a loosehead prop, he could pack down on either side of the front row – and was once, in an emergency, fast enough to play on the wing. His versatility made him a favourite choice for the free-playing Barbarians, who welcomed a prop who could run, score tries and kick penalties. He was invited to play for them 20 times, a signal honour, and went on tours of Canada and South Africa.
In Canada he once scored 28 points from six penalties and five conversions, a world record for a prop forward. “I did a bit of goal-kicking,” he said later, “a straight toe-end boot, usually when everyone else had failed.”
Away from rugby, he worked during the war as a sheet metal worker at Gloucester Aircraft Company, then took jobs with the South Wales Coal Board and with the GEC in London before becoming supplies officer at Immingham port. In 2013, when he was 88, he was invited into the dressing-room at Twickenham to tell the players what it meant to him to wear the England jersey.
George Hastings married Jean Moore, whose brother played rugby for Cheltenham. They were married for 68 years. In later life they ran a hotel in Lincolnshire. He leaves her and two sons.