Rugby Matters by Brendan Gallagher – A weekly look at the game’s other talking points
Rugby was undergoing a massive boom 150 years ago so we shouldn’t be surprised so many teams are celebrating their sesquicentennial anniversary as those who glory in long words like to call it.
Ireland, Leinster, Gala, Watsonian, New Brighton, Yale over the water …and Redruth, a powerhouse club in Cornwall from the off. All of them are celebrating this season one way or another.
Nick Serpell, a fount of all knowledge on the Reds and indeed Cornish rugby generally, has, as you would expect, risen to the occasion with a beautifully crafted club history to ensure Redruth’s legacy remains intact for posterity.
Redruth have always been part of the rich tapestry of Cornish rugby, at the heart of their great county campaigns and willing hosts for big county matches and indeed divisional matches. When confronted with the prospect of playing the famous 1908 County final against Durham the Cornish players took a vote as to where to stage the great game… and Redruth it was.
With its array of natural banks and temporary stands, the Recreation Ground was for many years listed as the third biggest rugby-specific ground in England behind Twickenham and Welford Road with an all time capacity of 21,172 although local press reports suggest a 25,000 attendance for Cornwall’s 1969 County Championship final against Lancashire. Now stripped bear it’s probably about 3,000 but it has an ambience of its own.
I was lucky enough to attend a couple of big games when it was still a ground to reckon with, notably a County championship semi-final against Yorkshire when all 12,000 of us seemingly poured out of pubs simultaneously full of pasties and beer and marched to the ground en masse behind the Falmouth Marine band. We were running a little late but the match was never going to kick off until the crowd was in.
Many of the biggest names in Cornish rugby played for Redruth and of course their rivalry with Camborne is legendary. Their Boxing Day fixture has been played continuously since 1928 and with the Camborne club only three years younger there were many fixtures before that date.
Their rivalry is civic as much as sporting and famously in the distant past there was even a scandalous case of a draper’s shop burning down in the middle of Camborne. The Camborne Fire captain was also the captain of the rugby team and when the Redruth tender – with the Redruth rugby captain in charge – rushed to the scene offering assistance it was refused. Meanwhile two women were killed in the blaze.
After the inquest the Cornish Telegraph offered the view that: “There was no word bad enough to condemn the rivalry which existed in connection with the brigades and the two towns.”
The two sides have met every Boxing Day since 1928, one of the longest continuous sequences of inter club games in the country, and met many times prior to that date although not always every season. The fixture is currently played for the Buzza Cup.
It hasn’t always been plain sailing though far from it. What we don’t always appreciate in these tumultuous challenging times in rugby is that there is very little new in sport and life – clubs like Redruth have endured huge fluctuations and shifts of fortunes as their story unfolds. Sport has always endured massive fluctuations of fortune and circumstance.
At various times Redruth have struggled in the playing sense and of course professionalism was a huge challenge. A long time ago they also had to acknowledge that Cornish Pirates were now the flag bearers for Cornwall at professional level while at the same time as playing at the best level they could which is currently National League 2 West.
When you think of Redruth now it is often the individuals and names you recall first. Mining engineer James “Maffer” Davey went to work in South Africa for two years and skippered mighty Transvaal there before returning to help Cornwall to their famous 17-3 win over Durham in the County final in 1908, a game played in front of nearly 20,000 fans at Redruth.
It was around this time that Hellfire Corner, the corner where the ground sloped away to the tryline but the corner containing the largest concentration of fans became a “thing”. Opponents would be pinned down there, opponents would feel the hot breath of the home crowd, all but the most experienced referees would feel intimidated.
Davey, right, later played for England and toured Australia and New Zealand with the 1908 Lions but the absolute star of that 1908 Cornwall team was another Redruth man, centre Bert Solomon, the most enigmatic of players.
Strong, fast and agile from working in a pig slaughterhouse from the age of 12, Solomon was almost a reluctant rugby player but was gifted by the gods and in the opinion of most rugby historians was the back to first perfect the dummy pass.
He scored twice in the 1908 final, scored again for Cornwall when they represented GB against Australia in the 1908 Olympic final and claimed a stunning try on his England debut in 1910 when he heralded a rare 11-6 win over Wales. England’s patrician skipper Adrian Stoop pronounced himself much impressed and opined that Solomon has the brightest of futures.
But that, at the age of 25, was that. Solomon didn’t enjoy the pressure, was uncomfortable with the social snobbery he experienced during his long weekend with England. In fact even in Cornwall nobody was actually sure if he enjoyed playing the game.
He declined to play for club, county and country again – on three occasions Stoop tried to get him to rethink about his England career -– and spent his leisure hours tending his racing pigeons and occasionally watching Cornwall games looking over the wall outside the Redruth ground itself.
There have been others of course. Centre Roy Jennings was a mighty figure but although a Lions tourist in 1930 he failed to gain an England cap despite appearing in seven Finals trials.
Another who falls into the best uncapped England player category is flanker Bill Phillips who the Australian tourists in 1947-48 considered the best flanker they came up against, including the Test matches they played.
The dashing Richard Sharp, possibly Redruth’s most famous old boy, always lists Phillips as one of his rugby heroes and of course Sharpe in turn was idolised by many rugby fans in Cornwall.
The formidable Edward Scott, a medic, was another staunch Redruth man and is always remembered as England’s first captain after World War II when they returned to action against Scotland at Murrayfield.
Feeling his jaw break during a rough exchange midway through the first half, Scott calmly told the reserve dispensing oranges at half time to order a taxi to be waiting for him by the changing rooms at Murray field because he had broken his jaw and would need it fixing in hospital as soon as the game was over.
Last but not least comes Phil Vickery, the Raging Bull himself, who played all his age group rugby out of the club although he went on to win his England caps, world cup and tour with the Lions while at Gloucester and Wasps. The rugby world has changed out of all recognition in the last 150 years but Redruth are still here, still playing rugby and, although you say very little with certainty these days, I would suggest they will definitely still be going strong come 2075 and their 200th anniversary.
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