At long last, the in-depth story about Obolensky
It was back in February 2009 that a few of us trooped up to Ipswich early one February morning for the unveiling of a commemorative statue to Alexander Obolensky, the dashing England wing of noble Russian ancestry who scored two brilliant tries against New Zealand but alas died an early death in World War 2.
Myself and a few journalistic colleagues had been putting our shoulders to the wheel supporting a fund raising effort with his surviving family and with a timely contribution from Roman Abramovich and the local Ipswich Council the £70,000 required had finally materialised.
In the pub afterwards Hugh Godwin, then of the Independent, expressed the opinion that he had half a mind to write a biography on Obolensky. As journalists do when the beers are flowing. Twelve years later, and rather gloriously it must be said, Hugh’s labour of love has come to fruition with the publication of The Flying Prince.
These things take time and as Hugh, by his own admission, quickly discovered there was a reason why no biography had yet been produced. Obolensky was an elusive individual and to chronicle his life accurately required a huge amount of deep digging because our knowledge of his story has always been superficial and incomplete.
At the rear of the book for example he lists every game and try of his senior career and the formidable effort to complete that was thoroughly worthwhile because although Obo is mainly known for one game and two tries he was a serial try scorer – 89 in 115 senior games – wherever he went. His hard-core rugby talent preceded and transcended his celebrity status and was great to see that expressed statistically.
We know the comic book hero element of his story but in truth Obo was a very nuanced individual and something of a chameleon.
In some team line-ups or nights out on the town pictured in the book, he is a freshly scrubbed bright-eyed teenager while in others he could pass for a man in his mid-30s with dark rings around his eyes. Burning the candle at both ends? In some images he is a blonde adonis, seemingly of classical Greek origin, while in others he is brooding eastern European with much darker hair. He can look distinctly moody and
melancholy on occasions, something his contemporaries noted
Who was the real Obolensky? I certainly had him down as a funloving party boy, a natural athlete touched by the gods who effortlessly combined his sporting career with wine, women and song. A Russian aristocrat who danced his way through an entitled emigre life in London, gulping down a dozen oysters for breakfast and quaffing champagne after games before disappearing into the night with a bevy of beauties.
Well there was a bit of that, but this biography expertly fills in the gaps and adds context. The family was potless when they arrived in Britain as refugees when Obo was two. He had to beg, steal and borrow his way through school, university and indeed life – very elegantly of course – but he was not a man of independent means. How can we put it? Obo was always the passenger in a flash sports car, never the owner or driver; a prized guest at weekend parties but never the host; a drinker not a buyer of champagne.
Being part of the well-heeled Oxford set was a huge financial challenge, while his star status and good looks also complicated his apparently gilded life. Adored and chased by women he nonetheless agonised about never being able to afford to
settle down and marry “the one”. No money you see.The love of his life would appear to have been Tania Vornstov-Dachkov, his muse almost, but true love rarely runs smoothly.
Above all else though he was a star rugby player, something of a secret trainer and assiduous in his approach. He wasn’t just quick, he was a natural try scorer and although some doubted his defence he pulled off one of the great tackles in Varsity match history in 1935 while even against New Zealand the first bit of action the Pathe footage highlights is of Obo making a fine tackle.
His England debut, as a 19-year-old – three years younger than Marcus Smith – can surely never have been surpassed in its impact. For months the debate had raged about his eligibility and then he only goes and scores two sensational tries in front of the King and 70,000 fans at Twickenham to lead England to their first win over the All Blacks. Obolensky climbed Everest on his first foray into the high mountains.
Hugh has also dug out new evidence from dusty RFU minutes of a committee meeting the day before the final England trial that there were those who sought to stop him playing for England on grounds of eligibility.
There were no rules back then,
just opinion. Players born in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa had appeared for Home Union teams but the prospect of a Russian, albeit one whose family had escaped the Communist regime, appeared to alarm some. Happily the motion to block him, tabled by Jimmy Minahan the East Midlands secretary, was voted down and Obo celebrated the following day by scoring a blistering hat-trick for the Probables in the final trial. As comic book heroes do.
The two tries at Twickenham? I still reckon the first one is the best. He burst on to the ball some 65 yards out with perfect timing and a ballerina’s balance tiptoed through a gap and evaded two tacklers before setting off on a classical arc to completely dismiss the New Zealand full-back. It’s a very modern looking try and a thing of wonder.
The second owes its fame to its aesthetic beauty and the highly unusual diagonal line he cut against the grain. The only comparable try I can think of is David Campese in the 1991 World Cup semi-final. It relies on raw speed and is also curious in that if Obolensky had taken the ball in conventional fashion there was a clear overlap on his right. Instead he senses the pass isn’t quite right and squares his shoulders in field to catch the ball which automatically sets him off in the opposite direction against a badly wrong-footed defence.
Thereafter his career was a mixed bag. He played throughout the 1936 Home Nations although England struggled to feed their strike runner with the ball and he toured Argentina with the 1936 Lions, scoring 12 tries in his six documented games. There is, alas, no evidence of the fabled 17 tries against Brazil although it is almost certain there was an unofficial game in Santos on the return journey from Argentina.
After that the big injuries started arriving which stalled his career but by September 1939 – and still only 24 – he was looking very sharp again and in normal times a return to Test duties was on the cards. In December 1939 he scored for a combined England-Wales side against Scotland-Ireland and three weeks before his death he starred for England against Wales in a Red Cross international.
His death is dealt with in considerable detail with the author asking Squadron Leader Mark ‘Disco’ Discombe from the RAF’s Battle of Britain Memorial flight to look into his fatal crash on landing on March 29 at Mattlesham Heath near Ipswich.
From that we can confidently debunk any notion that Obolenksy was in some way an incompetent or gung ho trainee. He had already earned his wings but as Britain raced to make up lost time, training courses were being accelerated and shortened on new aircraft and he had little opportunity to master the single seater Hawker Hurricane Mark 1 which he was flying that morning. You learned on the job.
The Hurricane, according to Discombe, could be a trickly plane, especially for those who had only flown bi-planes previously. After flying perfectly adequately in formation with two other officers for half an hour or so they broke off to land independently with Obo the last man to make his approach. He came down a fraction too late and too fast, overshot, crashed and died as his plane flipped upside down.
A nation mourned the first rugby international killed in the war, but his name lived on and now we have the biography his story deserves.
The Flying Prince by Hugh Godwin (Hodder and Stughton, £20)