RUGBY MATTERS
A weekly look at the game's other talking points
OCTOBER has been designated Black History month and today we conclude our contribution to that initiative with a look at a handful of stunning black players who adorned English rugby in the 1970s and 80s. Some could – and at least one should – have been picked for the national team before Chris Oti's high profile selection in 1988 when he produced a MOM performance against Ireland.
Oti you will recall was the first black player England had selected since 1906 when James ‘Darkie' Peters, the son of a Jamaican lion trainer, played at fly-half for England. Was there really no black player good enough in those intervening years to play Test rugby for England?
Those who watched some of those noted below perform can make up their own minds on that but one significant caveat also needs to be aired. For much of the time the England selectors were such a perverse muddle-headed bunch that just about everybody got messed around, ignored, overlooked. This is an era in which scores of players can with some justification claim, “It should have been me!”
By general consensus – among his peers, colleagues and opponents – the one black player who should unquestionably have won a fistful of England caps was Bristol utility back Ralph Knibbs who arrived on the scene in 1982.
Knibbs was a brilliant stepping, jinking centre with serious gas in his youth who was also utilised on the wing and at full-back by Bristol where he made 436 first team appearances in 15 seasons during which he scored 122 tries. And bear in mind Bristol had a serious tough fixture list around this time with regular home and way encounters with the best Welsh clubs.
A talented basketball player, Knibbs also possessed an array of passes and off-loads that were frankly ahead of their time, which some colleagues failed to read and take advantage of.
He was box office from the start, scoring with his first touch in the First XV when called in as a late replacement, as a 17-year-old, for a tricky away assignment at Sardis Road against Pontypridd where a warm reception always awaited callow English visitors.
In those early teenage years Knibbs then starred in a Gloucester side that won the County Championship and a Bristol team that won the John Player Cup in 1983 and reached the final the following year. His cup over-runneth.
It was all going Knibbs' way and England selected him for their controversial 1984 tour of South Africa. At which point he had to make a big decision. A probable England cap and perhaps a prolonged Test career…or the preservation of his soul and peace of mind.
He chose the latter. As a high profile young black player he refused to in anyway endorse the apartheid regime and withdrew from the squad. Rarely has there been a more stark example of the road not taken.
As an ambitious 19-year-old that took some ticker and integrity because, be in no doubt, this was Knibbs' window of opportunity. It was his time. This was the era when England were desparately searching around for a midfield combo and the likes of Kevin Simms, Jamie Salmon and Fran Clough all came into focus and were capped. Simon Halliday was also viewed as a centre during this period although he later switched to the wing while England could never work out if Huw Davies was a centre, fly-half or fullback. He was in the frame also.
Knibbs, at the very least, was their equal in midfield and arguably an even more dangerous attacking and creative force. Think of the extra tries Rory Underwood might have scored playing outside Ralph Knibbs! By the end of the decade Will Carling and Jeremy Guscott were fully ensconced and it was more difficult to make an overwhelming case for Knibbs' inclusion, but circa 1984 he was on the cusp of a considerable England career.
He was also sounded out for England's tour of Australia and Fiji in 1988 but work commitments prevented him from travelling and that was it, his final shot at the big time although he remained a wonderfully entertaining player until he retired in 2001 having finished up with a short spell at Coventry after moving to the Midlands with work.
Predating Knibbs a little was the talented Trinidadian Bob Demming, whose parents came over with the Windrush generation. Demming was a flag bearer for black players in the 70s, a considerable speed merchant on the wing who amassed 73 tries in 147 appearance for Bedford including a brace at Twickenham in 1975 when the Blues beat Rosslyn Park 28-12 in the final of the RFU Cup.
When Demming was hot he was hot and there were seven hat-tricks in that total. There was often talk of an England cap and he won England B caps and appeared in final trials but the call-up never came. A talented cricketer with Bedfordshire. he player Minor Counties cricket throughout most of the 70s and his unavailability of summer rugby tours might not have helped his England rugby cause.
Matching Knibbs for pace and longevity and indeed excelling him in try scoring deeds was another unsung hero, Eddie Saunders, who started his career with Coventry although he is most closely associated with Rugby Lions where he seemingly played for ever and was famed for usually arriving at the ground just as the team were running out of the changing room.
Saunders didn't quite have the rugby craft and playmaking nous of Knibbs but he was a fantastic wiry athlete with the high stepping sprinting style of Olympic champion Don Quarrie and that priceless ability to find the whitewash. Slippery as an eel, he was very tough to nail down.
In 381 games for Rugby he scored 251 tries, including 104 league tries in 222 games. His career total was 310 tries in 507 senior games, the sort of figure we will never see again. He was the first to reach a league century and only Nick Baxter and Dave Scully have brought the ton up at Championship level (National 1 as was) and above.
England occasionally came into the equation but a nightmare game, including two or three dropped balls trying to field Garryowens for the Midlands in a Divisional Championship game seemed to put the selectors off for ever which was a shame because Saunders was normally pretty efficient and reliable in defenc
Finally one player often overlooked – possibly because he is seen mainly as a League legend – was Martin Offiah who was leaving vapour trails for Rosslyn Park from 1985 onwards in their Sevens team, starring for the Penguins at the Hong Kong Sevens, lighting up the Middlesex Sevens and scoring outrageous tries for the Barbarians during their Easter game at Cardiff.
Offiah was clearly the real McCoy, his talent was there to see every time he laced up, and was more than ready for Test rugby by the 1987 World Cup but typically England were suspicious of such an exotic creature and fatally dithered. The Rugby League scouts and coaches, notably Dougie Loughton at Widnes, had long clocked him, though, and eventually Loughton made Offiah an offer he couldn't resist.
As Park folklore has it the final lineout call of his final home game was “Widnes, Warrington, Whitehaven, Wigan”. The team had sniffed the wind and knew exactly what was happening even if the blazered committee men in the stand were still in splendid ignorance. A grievous loss for the England Rugby Union.
