Old Boys who enjoy touch of Shakespeare
OLD Alleynians are one of those clubs with a particularly distinguished past which might have haunted them a little, but they have evolved and changed with the times and they continue to enjoy their rugby immensely these days in London 2 South East.
They are essentially the Old Boys club of Dulwich College – a mighty rugby establishment for a century or more – and were the last major Old Boys team to become an open club when they bit the bullet in 1995. For those of you who might be asking why they simply weren’t dubbed the Old Dulwichians or something similar back in the day they take their name from Edward Alleyn, the actor and entrepreneur in Shakespearian times who made a small fortune and founded both Dulwich College and Alleyns College. And, for those of you who enjoy such trivia, Edward Alleyn is the character who was played by Ben Affleck in Shakespeare in Love.
The first record of rugby at Dulwich College was in 1859 and there was an impromptu Old Boys challenge against St Paul’s in 1872 but, although producing many fine players, an Old Alleynians club was not formed until 1898.
That was the instigation of W R Leake, an outstanding player at the school, before he went up to Cambridge where he won three Blues with Cambridge winning all three games. He later played his senior rugby for Harlequins and won three England caps before concentrating on his teaching career back at Dulwich where he felt there should be an Old Boys club.
He wrote to likely members and recent leavers and found a willing ally in the current First XV captain RM Everett who took up all the administrative work. A club was born and their debut match came against Croydon Third XV, Croydon essentially being an
Old Whitgiftian side. Rather wonderfully a character called McCulloch Christison, having left the school in 1898 joined in December of that year and although not technically a founder member spent the next 74 years serving the club in every conceivable capacity – player, match secretary, chairman, volunteer barman, diligent club historian etc. For his tireless efforts he very quickly earned the nickname of Slacker!
The club thrived from the off and by 1905 boasted five senior sides and had established a fixture list equal to almost any club in the southeast. Nor were they afraid to spread their wings. In 1905 and 1906 they embarked on short tours
of Germany around the Frankfurt area and there was another trip across the channel, this time en route to Paris where they played Stade Francais.
Old Alleynians members soon started winning international honours although they had mostly moved onto other clubs by the time they were capped or, as was usual at the time, they played for more than one club during any given season. Whatever, the club rightly shared in the glory.
Bernard Hartley was a doughty forward who passed through the Old Boys ranks before winning his two England caps in 1902 from Blackheath and later served as the manager of the 1938 Lions
in South Africa while A L “Berty” Wade was a club regular before he joined London Scottish from where he won his only Scotland cap in 1908 when the Scots defeated England at Inverleith.
David Trail meanwhile was a rough tough forward who moved north after playing for the Old Boys and became a regular for Sale from where he won caps for the British and Irish Lions on their tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1904. Trail never won an England cap and that was also the fate of scrum-half George Isherwood who appeared regularly for Old Alleynians and Guy’s Hospital before making three Test match appearances for the Lions in
South Africa in 1910. Around this era there was clearly a strong link between the College and Argentina – which had an influential expat population at the time largely concerned with the cattle business – and three former old Alleynians all played for Argentina in what is acknowledged as the Pumas first-ever Test match, against a Lions squad in 1911. They were Carlos Mold, K Drysdale and W H Bridger.
Mold was typical of these Anglo-Argentinian families. The son of a British broker who emigrated to Buenos Aires and excelled at both rugby and cricket while at school and playing for the Old
Boys before returning to Argentina. As well as rugby, Mold also represented Argentina at cricket after World War 1 by which time he was listed as a rancher.
A golden era was soon upon the Old Alleynians as they reaped, alas only too briefly, the rewards of an outstanding crop from the unbeaten Dulwich College team of 1909 before they moved onto the very top clubs and universities and achieved representative honours.
In 1913, famously, the Old Alleynians has a vested interest in five players in the Varsity match of that year, all of them current or future
internationals. The ‘famous five’ were J E “Jenny” Greenwood, Cyril Lowe, Eric LoudounShand, Graham Donald and W D Doherty.
Greenwood, a member of the wealthy Deloitte family of accountants, went on to captain England while Doherty was also to skipper Ireland. LoudonShand and Donald played for Scotland while flying wing Cyril Lowe was to become an early England legend.
The War badly disrupted their Test careers but did not ruin them entirely. Lowe, Greenwood and Doherty all survived hostilities and played Test rugby again while Loudon-Shand, despite an arm injury which eventually required amputation, skippered Oxford in the 1919 Varsity match before retiring. Only Donald who became a high-ranking RAF officer during the war was unable to return to the game.
A nice story surrounds the 1919 Varsity match involving the two Old Allenynian skippers, Greenwood in the Light Blue corner and a veteran of four Varsity matches and Major Eric Loudon Shand MC, as he was by this stage. Greenwood, who had left Cambridge and was working in the City, was dining with Barry Cumberlege the 1913 skipper and trying to conjure up a way of helping a depleted Cambridge put together a decent team when the newly elected Oxford captain
Loudon Shand walked in with former Oxford captain Bruno Brown for their own meal.
As the two parties broke-up later that evening they naturally started a conversation at the bar. Greenwood – possibly slightly over-egging the pudding a tad – lamented the absence of any old hands at Cambridge. LoudounShand immediately suggested, rather generously, that Greenwood should return to Cambridge for a second time although Greenwood was momentarily nonplussed as a convention existed that players were not eligible for a Blue if they returned for a different degree or course.
Greenwood takes up the tale in
his autobiography
Boots: “I replied that it would not be much fun getting a side together and then dropping out and not playing against Oxford. Greatly to my surprise Shand replied immediately that Oxford would not object to me playing a fifth time.”
Immediately after the War, which saw 76 Old Alleynian members lose their lives, was strangely a golden period for the club and at one stage they boasted over 600 members. They also produced a couple of players who were capped directly from the club. Kendrick Stark, a forward who could play in both the front and second row, won all nine of his caps from the club and was ever present during England’s Grand Slam season of 1928. Fullback Eric Whitely meanwhile was capped twice by England during the 1931 Five Nations.
Post World War 1 the Old Alleynian connection with South America was still in evidence as club members returned to the Pampas and their jobs as ranchers or brokers. This time it was Uruguay that benefitted the most with four Old Boy members appearing in Los Toros’ first ever international – brothers E C and J M Cate, L P Bridal and E A Cleugh. C H Scott also played for Argentina. Cleaugh was an interesting individual, a career diplomat in South America and the Caribbean who became a good friend of Ernest Hemingway while in later life he wrote one of the best travel books on Majorca.
Having suffered heavily during World War 1 the Old Boys were also rocked during World War 2 losing another 49 members – remarkably “Slacker” Christison found time to write memorial books commemorating both sets of War heroes and their deeds.