Invincibles...55 wins, a ton of tries and a triumphant tour of Oz

THE 1979-82 period were vintage years with 55 consecutive wins over the best part of three seasons, a run which started in autumn 1979 when an unusually young team featuring five fifth formers in the pack alone won 21 of their 25 games and finished runners up at the Oxford and Millfield Sevens. This was the year group that, as U13s, had also scored a notable triumph at Rosslyn Park a few years earlier.

The team was captained by Derek Seabrook who headed up a back division including James Arnold, Ian Aspinall and Colin McIntyre who accounted for many of the 107 tries the side scored. Up front future Sale and England B hooker Tony Simpson was a standout as was Glyn Lewis, who joined the school at the age of 16 with a big reputation as a powerful centre but on account of his size was immediately moved to lock.

The following year they were untouchable, amassing 714 points in their 21 straight wins and conceding just 36 points – and no tries – all season. Off the back of that they finished second only to Leicester Tigers as the Rugby Team of the Year at the Daily Express awards but remarkably better still was yet to come.

The school’s centenary year was 1982 and, with the rump of the side from the last two seasons still available, Cowley really went to town.

The Cowley line-up had five England age group internationals on board and another three Lancashire players to boot. This time they were invited down to the Dorchester in London for the evening where they pipped Gloucester to the Team of the Year award.

The season had begun with an extraordinary fiveweek, 13-game tour of

Australia, possibly the most ambitious ever organised by a British school during which they won every game including prestige matches against Brisbane HS – in 85 degrees of heat – Randwick and Matraville HS. On returning home they again swept aside all domestic opposition, again not conceding a try in their 21 matches. Throughout the entire season they scored a total 952 points including 184 tries,

while conceding just 74 points.

“That 55 team, as I call them, was very good,” concedes French. “We toured Australia at the end of that era and were unbeaten as well despite one school fielding their Old Boys which was a compliment I suppose. We could defend really well but frankly there wasn’t much need because we were attacking 90 per cent of the time.

“The old adage about attack being the best form of defence is sound. That team had six or seven England schoolboys – Gary Muldoon, Warren Joyce, Norman Pickavance, Marcus Taylor, Ian Aspinall, David Roy, Tony Simpson – at various age groups but I wouldn’t necessarily say it was our best team. Some of our unbeaten teams in the Sixties and Seventies were right up there with the likes of Dave Gullick, Mick Burke, Ian Ball, John Horton, Nigel Yates and others.

“The best school team I ever encountered? Reigate GS were right up there. We had a long run of great matches against them and it was all the more interesting because we ‘represented’ two very different circuits, North West and South East. At the same time we were also very similar teams – small fast forwards, lightning, highly skilled backs. Locally St Edward’s Liverpool could be very classy indeed in their pomp and our local rivals West Park was often a good contest.

“There used to be huge interest in those games. Even in the 70s it would be normal to get £500 in a bucket collection for our next tour when we played Reigate or one of local derby games.”