Au revoir France as Home Unions assert their power
Brendan Gallagher continues his expert and authorative look at the history of Rugby Union
THE history of Rugby Union has always been marked by great schisms and juddering halts in the game’s development and the 1930s kicked off with just such an event, the expulsion of France from the Five Nations soon after the conclusion of the 1931 tournament when they had shown up well – perhaps too well for the liking of some – with excellent home wins over Ireland and England.
French Rugby Union was unquestionably becoming professionalised and in a far more blatant and cynical way than the broken time payment that caused the schism in English rugby in 1895.
The suspicions had existed for years. Just before the outbreak of WW1 adverts had been placed in Scottish newspapers looking for talented backs wishing to play for French clubs. That caused a stir and by the late 20s and early
30s the breaches of the amateur code were rife in many parts of France.
Small village team Quillan, financed by wealthy hatmaker Jean Bourrel, were the most obvious offenders, buying up a dozen or so of the best players in south east France which saw them reach three consecutive French Cup finals. They won the second of those against Lezignan who were scarcely less guilty themselves and briefly an association of 12 clubs – the so called Les Douze – willing to pay players was formed and split away from the French Federation.
With livelihoods and money on offer, France had also experienced a significant escalation of violence on the pitch with reports of fatalities, both on the field and among fighting fans.
It was all getting out of hand and certainly too much for the more staid figures running the British and Irish game and after the 1931 Five Nations – despite compelling evidence that the French were rapidly become a force – they were summarily kicked into touch. Persona non grata.
The consequences were profound. French rugby, and therefore Continental rugby, was cast adrift at a crucial stage of the game’s development. It became more than ever a game of Britain and her Empire. France had to go looking for opposition elsewhere and formed the Fédération Internationale de Rugby Amateur (FIRA) with the founder members being Italy, Romania, Netherlands, Catalonia, Portugal, Czechoslovakia and Sweden. It was a poor substitute for Five Nations rugby even if Italy and occasionally Germany provided some very decent opposition.
The result was a marked decline in club Rugby Union in France and, in contrast, a significant boom for professional Rugby League which by the time World War 2 was declared in 1939 had arguably become the dominant code in France.
As this became obvious, France, following the 1939 Four Nations tournament, were invited back into the fold for 1940 but, of course, that competition never took place due to the outbreak of war. Curiously the war perhaps helped save Union in France with the Vichy Government outlawing Rugby League but allowing Union to continue in a small but meaningful way with French Championships being contested between 1943-45. More of which in another chapter.
Back to the 30s. Domestically Oxford and Cambridge still held sway in a big way with honours pretty much even in a series of stunning games even if some were very low scoring – 3-3 in 1930 and 0-0 in 1935, the last scoreless game in the fixture.
That match looked set to go Cambridge’s way when their speed merchant John Rawlence was sent sprinting for the line with nobody to beat but out of nowhere – in fact from the opposite wing – came a mop of flying blonde hair in the shape of Alexander Obolensky who sent Ralwence crashing into touch a foot short of the line.
The standard of Varsity rugby throughout was high as Wilfred Wooller, who was to star in a Wales win over New Zealand in 1935, was to recall: “I had always been very fast and been able to make breaks and get away without the ball doing the work but because of injury I had slowed up by the time I arrived at Cambridge and this method wouldn’t really work anymore. Fortunately we had a very good coach in Windsor Lewis who concentrated on back play. We had to give and take a pass in two strides running flat out and get the ball to the wing before his opposite number could get to him. I became a much better player.
“So the back play was of a very high standard, the best I ever played in. That part of my game improved and it became very important. Being at University made all the difference to my career because it turned me from an individual to a team player. It also taught me how to train other people.”
To the rugby world at large the most dramatic moment of the 30s was England’s spectacular 13-0 win over New Zealand in 1936 and that is after paying due homage to an excellent Welsh win over the tourists a few weeks earlier. Under today’s scoring methods England’s three tries and dropped goal would have constituted an 18-0 victory which would be England’s biggest ever winning total over the All Blacks.
The star of the show was the 20-year old Obolsenky who, on debut, scored two of the best individual tries ever scored by an Englishman at Twickenham.
Obolensky was an exotic and glamorous creature – the like of which English rugby has rarely seen; centrestage at the Bolshoi Ballet was probably his natural habitat, but his family’s flight to Britain as political refugees set him on another, altogether stranger, course.
He was the son of Prince Serge Obolensky, an officer in the Czar’s
Imperial Horse Guards, and his wife Princess Luba, with their family name derived from the Russian town of Obolensk on the southern outskirts of Moscow. They fled Russia after the Russian Revolution of 1917, settling in Muswell Hill, London. A beautifully balanced athlete with not an ounce of surplus body fat, he ran at all times as if negotiating the bend of a 220-yard race, dipping his left shoulder into the bend. Blessed with withering pace, he nonetheless despaired of the heavy clumping boots of the era and pioneered the use of lightweight boots.
Rugby, nonetheless, held a precarious foothold in his life. In a hectic world of wine, women and song, debutante balls, writing theatrical reviews for Isis magazine, top-table dining at Oxford and Russian émigré society, rugby was never going to rule his life for very long. Study went on the back-burner as well, ‘Obo’ scraping a classic sportsman’s fourth in politics, philosophy and economics at Brasenose College.
The Morning Post didn’t hold back when describing his heroics at Twickenham. “Runners we have seen before but never such a runner with such an innate idea of where to go and how to get there. His double swerve to gain his first try was remarkable enough but the extraordinary turn-in and diagonal right to left run which won him his second and which drew forth that great Twickenham rarity, a double roar of applause, will never be forgotten by anybody who saw it.”
Peter Cranmer, playing centre for England that day, recalled years later: “Had I not made a mistake – passing inside as I couldn’t see Obo on my right – it would never have been scored. The England side played as well that day as in any international in which I took part. They played as a complete team in spite of the fact that we had only one practice run on the Friday afternoon.”
The England team, in fact, was not even picked until the Friday afternoon when the squad gathered at the Honourable Artillery Company Ground in the City and training that day was close to farcical, with members of the HAC being press-ganged to provide a pack to scrummage against. That evening England retired to dine at the Metropole Hotel, in Northumberland Avenue, London, where the New Zealanders were also staying. Different times.
“Obolensky scored two of the best tries ever by an Englishman at Twickenham”