We all owe a debt to Mobbs and his chums

ON Flanders’ fields in the summer of 1917, Edgar Mobbs is said to have kicked a rugby ball into no-man’s land as the signal for the troops to go over the top.

Of all the 185 internationals from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and France who laid down their lives in two world wars, few were more colourful than Mobbs.

An England threequarter f rom Nor t h a m p t o n , he recruited 250 men in three days from the Tudor Rose county at the outbreak of the Great War and formed his own battalion. He was killed storming a German machine gun nest on the first day of the third battle of Ypres in 1917.

On Armistice Day, the game remembers those who gave their today for our tomorrow, among them Dave Gallaher, the original captain of the All Blacks, whom the current team honoured this week at his Donegal home on the shores of Lough Swilly at Ramelton.

THE old Napoleonic

theory about lucky generals rang true in London this week. Fabien Pelous, whose decorations would command a fair bit of space in the Louvre, could not have complained had he been banned for three months instead of nine weeks.

At least the France captain apologised for elbowing Australian hooker Brendan Cannon in the face, not that he had much option. ‘I was upset when I saw the video of the incident,’ he said.

Not half as upset as his victim.

HOW about this for

chutzpah? According to

the public relations firm promoting their new black jersey, Wales ‘had hoped to wear them against New Zealand last week but their plans were vetoed by New Zealand’.

Why stop there? Why not borrow a few players as well? Officially, the new kit marks the 125th anniversary of the WRU next year — another excuse to sell replica shirts.