Harry Walker
Fearsome prop forward for England and Coventry who tired of the game’s ‘penny-pinching’ officials
HARRY WALKER, who has died aged 103, was the oldest surviving England rugby international, having won nine caps as a rugged prop forward in 1947 and 1948. He also appeared for the Barbarians against Australia. His cap tally would have been much higher had it not been for the six lost seasons of the Second World War, when he went from the age of 24 to 29.
He might have been selected before the war, but for the fact that his club chairman at Coventry, a schoolmaster, thought he was too dirty a player to be recommended for national honours. The England selectors tried to recall him in 1952, when he was 37, but he declined, partly at least because of his openly expressed disdain for the “penny-pinching” blazers at Twickenham.
He played all his rugby for Coventry, then one of the country’s leading clubs, from 1932 to 1952. During the war and in the immediate post-war period the club played 72 games without defeat.
An uncompromising character, Walker was feared and respected as one of the hard men of post-war rugby. In those days, before referees could call for television replays, props had to look out for themselves. His wrestling battles with rival front-row forwards, especially in local derbies against Leicester, Northampton and Rugby, became the stuff of legend.
Even in extreme old age, he was able to recall some juicy episodes from 60 or more years before. At one time he was landlord of the Grapes public house, close to the Coventry ground. Late at night, after a few drinks, he could be persuaded to take off his shirt and show the weals on his back inflicted by the South African tourists in 1951, when he slipped at a scrum and the Springbok pack marched all over him.
In his first game for Coventry, as an 18-year-old playing against Cardiff, he found himself pitted against Archie Sym, then captain of Wales. “At the first scrum, bang, he hit me,” Walker said. “I couldn’t speak. At the next scrum he swung at me again, but missed. I kept my back straight and pushed hard, and I could see he was suffering more than me. I was all right after that.”
He recalled with relish his tussles with other hard men of the era, such as Eric Bates of Rugby and Digger Morris of Gloucester, and laughed about the time the Coventry forwards pushed the Leicester scrum back 25 yards. Once, when he had scored two winning tries against Rugby, he was admonished by his captain in the dressing-room: “Your job’s not to score tries. It’s to get your head down and get that ball back for far better players than you to score tries.”
At a shade under 6ft and 16 stone, with thick black hair slicked to the side, Walker looked a fearsome opponent and his rough saturnine features were once likened to those of Rocky Marciano. His hands, according to a fellow player, were “like shovels”.
Henry Walker was born in Coventry on February 18 1915. (He invented the middle initial W when he played for England because everybody else had two or three initials, half the team coming from Oxbridge.)
His father was killed on the Somme when Harry was a baby. He attended John Gulson school in Coventry and on leaving at 14 he formed an old boys’ rugby club so that he could continue playing. When Coventry came calling, he was converted from a flanker to a tighthead prop. He turned down a signing-on bonus of £100 to play rugby league for Huddersfield.
After school he was apprenticed as a machine tool fitter, which gave him exemption from military service during the war – though he was called up twice by the Army before being sent home to do munitions work in a converted Coventry car factory.
“You didn’t need gyms then,” he said, “because we all worked in physical jobs. Our training equipment was three skipping ropes. Training was on Tuesday and Thursday nights and we didn’t have floodlights. You’d run around in the mud and rain and then go home and have a bath.”
Even when he played for England, training consisted of a run round the Rosslyn Park pitch on Friday afternoons. The internationals provided their own boots and white shorts and had to hand back their jerseys after the game. They were urged to use buses. On one occasion he and Micky Steele-bodger, who later became President of the Rugby Football Union (RFU) and the Barbarians, were late for a session because their train was delayed reaching London; they were ticked off severely by the secretary of the RFU for charging for a taxi.
After he retired, Walker became coach to Coventry 2nd XV, bringing on future internationals such as David Duckham and Peter Rossborough.
He was match secretary for the Warwickshire side that won four county championships. Later he became President and finally Patron of his beloved Coventry club.
He had little time for the modern game. “The scrum is bloody awful,” he said on his 100th birthday. “A lot of blokes falling down. They are on the floor most of the time. It’s a farce.”
He was equally critical of modern back play, observing: “There is no room for finesse any more. If you beat one man, then three others hit you. There’s no room for a Jackie Kyle or a Bleddyn Williams.” The one exception he made was the former Irish centre, Brian O’driscoll, whom he admired.
For many years he stubbornly refused hospitality from the Twickenham authorities, until he was finally persuaded by Bill Beaumont and Fran Cotton – two ex-england forwards whom he had to acknowledge were as tough as himself – to attend an England-scotland game to mark his 100th birthday.
His wife Margery predeceased him and he leaves a son, Richard, who also played rugby for Coventry, and two daughters, Linda and Gayle.
Harry Walker, born February 18 1915, died June 6 2018