ALL BLACKS MAKE MOST OF BREAK IN SOMME CARNAGE
WHEN the guns fell silent at the Somme with the onset of winter in 1916 the question that occupied many Army commanders was what to do with millions of troops until the ‘Battle Season’ started again in the spring of 1917.
The New Zealand contingent, naturally, formed a rugby team which became known as the
Trench Blacks.
They organised an internal tour behind the lines between February – April 1917 culminating in a match against a full France XV on April 7, 1917 when they played for the Coup de Somme.
For three months after Christmas 1916 the squad – including seven All Blacks from their last pre-war Test – had virtually led the life of professional sportsmen with, for once, ample food and sleep.
Routine: 7am PT; 9am-1pm bayonet and bombing practice; 2.304-30pm rugby training, practice matches and games. Seven days a week. And on three nights a week there would be work outs in a local school gymnasium.
Only a strong Welsh Division full of Wales internationals were able to seriously trouble them. Malcolm Ross, war correspondent of the Dominion newspaper in Wellington, paints a surreal scene of their 18-3 win over the Welsh Division in a muddy field outside a Trappist monastery in Belgium close to the front line.
The tour culminated with the Test against France although Les Blues were rather thrown together with an emergency letter going out to 23 French generals the week before requesting the immediate release of the players if they could be spared, a number coming straight from combat action. Burly forward Alfred
Eluere had been involved in a fire fight with his tank engagement at 5.30pm the previous evening. In the end France fielded eight capped players. Trench Black Results: v British Divisional Select 74-3; v British Division Select 44-0; v Royal Engineers 22-0; v Welsh Division 18-3; v Irish Division 49-3; v Royal Flying Corp 82-0; v Welsh Division 3-0; v France 40-0; v NZ Hospital 44-0