Evans’ policy turns erratic England into champions Brendan Gallagher continues his expert and authorative look at the history of Rugby Union
WITH everybody looking to make up for lost time after World War 2 rugby continued to enjoy a golden era throughout the mid and late 1950s which offered up a much-appreciated sporting diversion in a pretty grey decade. In the UK, rationing didn’t end until July 1954 and there were frequent shortages of key foods while power failures were a fact of life.
During that period rugby offered up two of the most celebrated Lions tours in history, and world record crowds at Ellis Park (90,000) in 1955 and Bucharest (93,000). That last statistic, for Romania’s home game against France, is worth pondering on when you consider how the path forward for Romania was blocked for decade after decade. One for another day perhaps.
At home Wales were far from finished after beating the All Blacks in 1953 and shared two of the next three Five Nations, winning the other title outright, but slowly England and France were both beginning to flex their muscles. England took the Triple Crown in 1954, when they shared the title with Wales and France and then ended a 29-year drought by taking the Grand Slam in 1957. They also won the Championship the following year when they were undefeated but drew two of the games.
That 1957 Grand Slam was welldeserved and distinctive. In the seven seasons up to ’57 England had called on 69 players and it was virtually a tradition to unveil a new team every January against Wales for the first Five Nations game of every season. In January 1956, for example, England selected ten debutants when they lost at home to the Welsh but in 1957 the penny finally dropped that a winning team needs time to develop.
England’s skipper Eric Evans, a fiery Lancastrian and not a man to suffer fools gladly, was the key figure in this respect. He had detected some real promise in the 1956 team and, coming to the end of his career, he boldly took it on himself to tell the selectors what was required and not vice versa. A veteran at 36 he set the tone fitness wise, training twice a week with Manchester United, regardless of whether the RFU approved or not. It was very noticeable that when he retired at the end of 1958 England soon went back to a much more erratic and random selection policy.
England under Evans didn’t necessarily play the most attractive style of rugby but he wasn’t bothered, a winning England team was his sole aim.
Evans had some major talent at his disposal. Scrum-half Dickie Jeeps, who finished up winning 13 Lions caps which puts him second in the pantheon behind Willie John McBride, was at his absolute peak during this period. Jeeps never travelled anywhere without his catapult, water pistol and whoopee cushion and was one of two extroverts who served as Evans’ right hand man. The other was Peter Robbins, a rumbustious flanker and hard-living individual but also a deep thinker and tactician on the rugby field. John Currie and David Marques were as good as any second row combination then playing, Jeff Butterfield and Phil Davies were classy Lions centres and Peter Jackson one of the best wings who ever played as he demonstrated on the 1959 Lions tour.
One intriguing England selection – the only uncapped player to be introduced in 1957 – was the gifted Harlequin Ricky Bartlett at fly-half, a clever passer and a sublime kicker of the ball and talented all-round playmaker. Bartlett featured strongly in 1957, before being dropped for the opening game of the 1958 campaign. He then returned to guide England to two wins and a draw but thereafter was never picked again. With an England winning record of 92.85 per cent his international days were suddenly over. Evans had retired and was not there to thump the table and demand his retention.
Bartlett’s piece de resistance was the low cross field kick – the so-called kick pass – which is much more in vogue these days. He was unorthodox, well ahead of his time and possibly just a little too mercurial in his approach for the staid England selectors once Evans departed. It was England’s loss.
As the great Welsh fly-half Cliff Morgan commented when he retired in 1958: “It’s not until another fly-half makes you look second best that you really respect him. Ricky did this to me on two memorable occasions. I respected and still respect him for, apart from his playing, his approach epitomises what a rugger man should be.”
The England Grand Slam – and famously it was the first to be hailed as such at the time after a sub at the
Times used the Bridge term to describe their four victories on the trot – was not spectacular but then again most Grand Slams share that quality. It is consistency and hard graft that usually gets you home.
The first match was key, a grim 3-0 win at Cardiff, a dire spectacle decided by a single penalty from full-back Fenwick Allison. Next up came another invaluable away win, 6-0 in Dublin, which was achieved after being reduced to 14 men in the 28th minute when wing Peter Thompson departed with a rib injury. Peter Jackson scored a try and Robin Challis kicked a penalty.
A championship title beckoned but despite having their final two games at home nothing could be taken for
“England under Eric Evans didn’t play the most attractive style - a winning team was his sole aim”
granted. France were improving and made life difficult before England won 9-5 with Jackson scoring a brace and Evans crossing as well. All of which teed up the decider against Scotland who resisted strongly until midway through the second half when England suddenly opened up with tries for Davies, No.8 Reg Higgins and Thompson which heralded a 16-3 win.
Evans guided them to another championship the following season and, sandwiched in between the two championships, was a notable 9-6 win over the touring Australians and one of the best ever tries at Twickenham from the prolific Jackson. These were heady days for England but then, in 1959, came France’s big moment.
Les Bleus had been highly competitive throughout the 50s and now they landed their first outright championship. A generation of fine players had grown together – Lucien Mias, Michel Celaya, Jean Barthe and the
flamboyant Michel Crauste. They also had the diminutive and elusive Pierre Danos at scrum-half, the man who coined the expression about rugby being made up of ‘piano players and piano removers’.
That French team had matured splendidly in South Africa in the summer of 1958 when they claimed a famous series win, drawing the first Test in Cape Town and winning the second at altitude at Ellis Park and they moved onto the Five Nations with some confidence.
Again though it wasn’t straightforward and, after beating Scotland in their opening game, they stalled against England with a 3-3 draw before – in a particularly tight year with just 12 tries scored in all games – they won the championship with a convincing 11-3 home win over Wales. The celebrations were mighty, and they rather lamely slipped to a 9-5 defeat to Ireland in their dead rubber of a final game.
Of that team Crauste was possibly the player who left the biggest impression, one of the toughest and most enduring French forwards in history and the ferocity of his play earned the nicknames Mongol or Attila the Hun. The squat No.8/flanker – six foot and 14 stone – was virtually ever present for France between 1957-1966. He won 63 caps which for a long time in that era of fewer internationals was a world record.
Away from the international field club rugby continued to make steady ground, although in England at least the big games of the season were still the Final Trials, the latter stages of the County Championship, the Varsity match and the Army v Navy game. The club scene was still based firmly on friendlies and local rivalries.
There was an interesting development, though, at the ever-competitive and well-attended Middlesex Sevens with those two great PE Colleges St Luke’s and Loughborough beginning to become both a major source of elite players and producing a new generation of PE and rugby teachers, those who took the game forward in the 1960s and 1970s.
St Luke’s, captained by Wales flanker and future Halifax RL star Brian Sparks, shocked a star-studded London Welsh team to win the 1957 final while two years later Loughborough, led by future Wales and Lions back rower Alun Pask, and including four other Welsh students, claimed their first title, beating London Welsh by a slender 3-0 margin. Rugby was subtly changing, the era of the red brick University player was upon us, Oxford and Cambridge were not the only student teams to reckon with.