Flying start grinds to halt after Lions refuse to field a replacement
THE British Lions staged two major tours in the 1930s – and a third minor one to Argentina – but the entire concept of a representative British and Irish team was still evolving and, to be frank, still a bit hit and miss.
The 1930 tour of New Zealand represent everything – good and bad – we have grown to love about the Lions. It was selected in mystifying fashion, but the Lions nonetheless developed a dazzling back division that threatened to banish the Kiwis only to eventually be outdone by a lack of grunt and fitness up front.
They claimed a memorable first ever Test win on New Zealand soil – despite the captain Doug Prentice dropping himself on the eve of the game – and both the second and third Tests could have gone either way before they succumbed rather tamely in the fourth Test. It could have been so different.
The selection of the tour party suffered, if anything, from over-organisation with the Lions committee picking a provisional party in April 1929, giving those ‘selected’ 12 months to arrange six months’ leave and accumulate the £80 each player was required to bank with the Lions to cover their incidental expenses. All those making the trip also had to provide their own dinner jacket which was to be worn nightly when dining on the voyage to New Zealand!
Too much too soon. Only nine of that original party eventually toured and among those to drop out were brilliant Scottish backs Ian Smith and Phil Macpherson who would have been cast-iron starters. The Scots generally fared badly. In the six championship seasons prior to the 1930 tour, Scotland had won the Five Nations twice and shared the title twice, yet they eventually contributed just one player to the tour party, Hawick forward Willie Welsh.
Despite all these caveats and obvious failings, the 1930 Lions were still a rather distinguished party. No less than three of those involved were to become future knights of the realm. The dashing Carl Aarvold was to become a revered High Court judge while his England colleague Major General Douglas Kendrew DSO and three bars was one of the most decorated soldiers of World War 2. Ireland’s George Beamish meanwhile was a former fighter pilot who rose to the rank of Air Marshall in the RAF.
The manager was a crusty old former England international James Baxter, who had won an Olympic silver sailing in the 12m class at the 1908 Olympics although there were admittedly only two boats entered. Baxter, possibly under instructions from the Home Unions, made a point of challenging the New Zealanders throughout the tour on all their deviations from the laws of the game such as their difference in calling a mark, forming a scrum with just two in the front row, allowing replacements and leaving the pitch at half-time.
The Lions made a flying start in the seventh minute of the first Test when Roger Spong, the England flyhalf, picked out the Quins and England wing Jim Reeve with a fine cross field kick. The athletic and debonair Reeve is a rather forgotten figure. At Cambridge University he was best known as a high hurdler and cricketer and had failed to win a Rugby Blue, but England capped him in 1929 on the strength of his performances for Quins and for a couple of years he was a potent force. He had been retired a couple of years when he was killed in a motorbike accident in 1936.
New Zealand replied with a try from George Hart and were pressing for victory on the Lions’ line in the final minute when Ivor Jones, the Llanelli flanker, intercepted the ball and used his exceptional pace to sprint upfield with wing Jack Morley running hard in support.
On halfway the legendary George Nepia was patrolling for New Zealand but Jones could easily have been a Test centre so comfortable was he ball in hand. He drew the great Maori full-back perfectly, a glorious and dramatic moment.
The second Test was another close encounter with New Zealand winning 13-10 but the Lions were partly the architects of their own demise. Ireland’s versatile Paul Murray, originally listed as a centre when the tour party was picked, started at scrum-half but had to depart on the half hour with a broken collarbone. The Lions, slavishly sticking to their version of the laws refused the offer of fielding a replacement, a practice which had been commonplace in New Zealand since the turn of the century. Consequently, they soldiered on with 14 men. And lost.
Despite various heroics – not least from Aarvold who sprinted home for two tries, one of which was rated as one of the best ever scored against New Zealand – it wasn’t quite enough and the sides headed to Wellington for the third Test all square. This was another cracker with New Zealand having to defend mightily against a Roger Spong-inspired attack to win 15-10.
In the fourth Test the Lions ran out of steam and conceded four tries in a 22-8 defeat.
Eight years later the manager from 1930 – Jim Baxter – was the chief selector for the South Africa tour and, as usual in these amateur times, there were difficulties gathering the strongest side. The Wales and Cambridge University midfield combo of Cliff Jones and Will Wooller could not travel, nor could the brilliant Scots Wilson Shaw and Charles Dick who had run England ragged at Twickenham in 1938.
The squad was not without talent though. Vivian Jenkins was an effervescent presence behind the scrum as were follow Welshmen Bill Clement and Haydn Tanner although the latter was much injured on tour.
Up front the squad’s Irish skipper Sam Walker was a wily old campaigner and still very fit – he played in 17 of the 24 matches on tour including all three Tests – and he was joined at the coalface by two tempestuous characters in hooker Bunner Travers from Newport and Irish back five forward Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne.
The last two were kindred wild spirits taken to disappearing into dockyard pubs looking for fights or heading into the bush to hunt antelope and other game and then bringing them back to the team hotel and dumping the carcasses in the rooms of unsuspecting colleagues.
Mayne was to become one of the founding fathers of the SAS, a legendary fighting machine and one of the most decorated soldiers in World War 2 when he was awarded the DSO and three bars.
The tourists, despite a crippling list of injuries, were generally successful in the provinces but, in the first two Tests at least, lacked the cutting edge to challenge an exceptionally powerful Boks side. They lost those 26-12 and 19-3 but in the third Test, played in great heat at Newlands, the Lions produced a stirring effort to score four tries and unexpectedly claim the spoils 21-16.
Mayne was adjudged to have been the Lions’ best forward in all three games but was particularly prominent in this final act of defiance, the last time the Lions were to be seen in action for 12 years.