of the playing strength of these islands.
It is not sufficient to send abroad some players who are of international standard and some who are second class. Every member of the team must be absolutely first class, or disaster is bound to overtake it.
Harding then slammed the home unions for not taking the tour or indeed the southern hemisphere nations seriously enough: ‘There has always been too much condescension by the British rugby authorities about our attitudes both to our continental neighbours and the colonies.’
Having retired from rugby the previous year to pursue his career in law, Harding was free to castigate his targets in officialdom. It did his legal career no harm—he later became a judge—but the frosty atmosphere when he encountered the ‘blazers’ of the committee rooms can only be imagined. Harding, whose great-nephews Sam and Tom played top-class rugby in their native New Zealand and in England, was a man ahead of his time, and the next tour in 1930, a year after his words were published, would prove him all too correct.
One footnote from that tour emerged in 2005, when a blue 1924 Lions jersey came up for auction, apparently the one exchanged with Alf Walker of the Springboks after the final Test Match. It was said to be in the same condition as it had been at the end of the match, though presumably it had been washed. The collar of the jersey was torn off—proof that the Springboks have never given any quarter.
At the time that the 1930 tour was agreed, the finest side of that international era was Scotland, with rugby in the Borders enjoying a purple patch. The Four Home Unions Committee, which was responsible for selecting the touring party, apparently contacted 100 players about their availability for the trip Down Under, and a fair number of invitees were Scottish. But it was a sign of the uncertain economic times that only one Scot, Willie Welsh of Hawick and Scotland, felt able to travel. The Committee’s first choice as captain, England’s Wavell Wakefield, was unable to tour, as was their second choice, Dr George Stephenson, then the most-capped player in the world, whose record of 14 tries for Ireland in home matches stood until a certain Brian O’Driscoll came along. Doug Prentice of Leicester and England eventually took up the captaincy, and clearly did a competent job of administration, as some years afterwards he became secretary of the RFU. He was not so successful as a player, and omitted himself from three Test teams.
The tour party still managed to comprise 29 players, of whom 11 were or would become England internationalists, with 6 Welsh caps, 5 Irish, plus Willie Welsh of Scotland. The star player was Welsh flanker Ivor Jones, who was nominated as ‘The King’ by the New Zealand press and public before Barry John was even born. Later president of the Welsh rugby union, Jones struck up a lifelong friendship with legendary opponent George Nepia.
Another Welshman who impressed his hosts was Jack Morley, who would return Down Under as a professional with the Great Britain rugby league tourists in 1936. Fly-half Roger Spong usually formed a great partnership for England with scrum-half Wilf Sobey, but the latter was badly injured in the first match of the tour and missed the remaining matches in which Spong nevertheless excelled.
Yet another of the touring internationalists was Carl D. Aarvold of Cambridge University and England, who later in life would be knighted and face opposition even tougher than the All Blacks—as Recorder of London he sat in judgement on the notorious gangster twins, the Krays. Other members of the party included Ireland’s George Beamish, a Royal Air Force pilot who later became Air Marshal Sir George Beamish, KBE, CBE, and Brian Black, who also became an RAF pilot and was killed in action in 1940.
Alongside Aarvold at centre for all four Tests in the New Zealand leg of the tour was the then 23-year-old Harry Bowcott of Cambridge University and Wales, who would go on to be president of the WRU more than 40 years later. Thanks to his surviving to the great age of 97—he died in 2004—and his willingness to be interviewed by Lions historian Clem Thomas among others, Bowcott has provided us with real insight into what it meant to be a Lion in those days.
First of all, he was adamant that selection for the Lions was a great honour and hugely exciting for the young men of the day, as there were few opportunities to travel Down Under in 1930. Though they had a surprising amount of freedom—there was only one manager, no coaches and such training sessions as they did were taken by captain Prentice—the players were strictly controlled in one way, namely their finances. Each player was allowed to bring £80 spending money, which was handed over at the beginning of the tour to the formidable manager, James Baxter of the RFU. Players could draw their own money only by asking Baxter, who also doled out the daily allowance of three shillings per day—equivalent to 15p in modern money. Even that was paid in ‘chits’ of a shilling or sixpence at a time, as no money could be allowed to change hands for fear of breaching the professionalism laws. Meals and other costs were met from the tour budget, and of course, when they arrived at their destinations, the players rarely had to put their hands in their pockets—the hospitality of their hosts saw to that.
Players also had to bring a dinner jacket, as formal dress was compulsory for the nightly dinners on board the good ship S.S. Rangitata, which took five weeks to reach New Zealand, sailing westwards through the Panama Canal and across the vast Pacific Ocean. Some of the players had to rely on their clubs to provide them with their formal wear, as the tour party consisted of men from all social backgrounds, though all were apparently well mannered. Yet none of the tourists took the financial inducements they could have earned as Lions. Bowcott summed up their attitude years later, saying: ‘I would have given up rather than play professional. I would never have taken the money.’
Team selection on that tour was by a committee of senior players with at least one representative from each of the home unions, though Bowcott admitted that Willie Welsh’s strong Hawick accent meant no one could understand him—perhaps the reason why he played only one Test.
According to Thomas’s account of Bowcott’s memories while speaking in his eighties, there was one group of people who were not missed on the tour:
There were, thank goodness, no pressmen, which was a wonderful thing, for we could do as we liked without looking over our shoulder.
We were no better and no worse than the young men of today in our behaviour. We drank a bit and enjoyed female company, but we tended to carouse only after matches. Standards of behaviour were left to the individual. I will not say that the manager, Jim Baxter, could not care less, for he was a typical RFU man. It so happened they were all nice people.
Baxter was to play a crucial and highly controversial role on the tour. There had been reports filtering back to the home unions that New Zealand’s approach to the laws had become lax, and confirmation came at half-time in the very first match against Wanganui, when the home side insisted on a break of ten minutes and a cup of tea.
Baxter was apoplectic. The agreement between the Home Unions Committee and the New Zealand Union was that matches would be played under IRB laws, which clearly stated that no one could leave the pitch without permission and only in special circumstances. The home union gave way on that point, but did not kowtow to Baxter on their interpretation of the scrummaging laws which saw the All Blacks pack down in a 2–3–2 formation with two hookers up front and a spare forward known as a ‘rover’ who was used to put the ball into the scrum and savage the opposition half-backs on their put-in. That the rover just happened to be the All Blacks’ captain and best player, wing forward Cliff Porter of Wellington, who had also led the side on their 1925 ‘Invincibles’ tour, gave the New Zealand officials added impetus to defend their stance.
To be fair, the laws at that time did not state how many players should make up a scrum, and the All Blacks continued to use the formation and the rover forward despite Baxter’s accusations of cheating; accusations he extended to the New Zealand interpretation of the ‘mark’, which allowed the call to be made when both feet were
