final Test in Cape Town and no one should ever underestimate the pride of Lions.
In a thrilling match which went down to the final seconds when referee Nick Pretorius disallowed a Springbok ‘try’ for a forward pass, the Lions came from being 3–13 down at half-time to record a famous victory. The wind had been against them in the first half, but they took full advantage of the conditions in the second, and it probably helped that eight of the players were from Ireland and knew each other’s game well. It should be recorded that the Springboks themselves notified the referee that Charlie Grieve’s drop goal for four points had indeed crossed the bar. Bishop Carey’s prayers almost 40 years earlier that the South Africans would always play like gentlemen were answered on that day.
The Lions had beaten the Springboks for the first time since 1910, and Sammy Walker was carried off the field in triumph after their 21–16 win. But there was no hiding from the fact that a Lions series had been lost again. There was little time for disappointment, however, as the players returned home to their own countries to await the visit of the Australian tourists in 1939.
The Wallabies had been in Britain for just one day when war was declared on 3 September. They had the consolation of a reception at Buckingham Palace by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth before they embarked on the long and now much more dangerous voyage home. Organized rugby effectively ceased for the duration of the war, though many scratch matches were organized, particularly within and between the various Services. Even the rules on professionalism were set aside and players from rugby union and rugby league played together and fraternized.
Almost all of that Lions party of 1938 saw their careers curtailed by the war. Bob Alexander and earlier Lions such as 1930 tourists Brian Black and Royal Tank Corps officer Henry Rew died as a result of wounds sustained in action, while Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne, the fighting Irishman of the 1938 pack, won no less than four Distinguished Service Order medals, the Legion D’Honneur and Croix de Guerre. Amazingly, another Lions forward, Major General Sir Douglas Kendrew of the 1930s squad, equalled Mayne’s feat of winning a DSO and three bars—only seven men in history have achieved that quadruple honour, and two of them were British and Irish Lions.
One of the most extraordinary of all the Lions, Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne in particular would become a legend of military history as one of the original members of the SAS. He was named after his mother’s cousin, Robert Blair, who also won the DSO before being killed in the First World War. Blair Mayne became a champion amateur heavyweight boxer and all-round sportsman, as well as a qualified solicitor, but it was rugby at which he excelled and he was soon selected for Ulster, Ireland and then the Lions.
A year after his return from South Africa, Mayne, who had been in the Territorial Army, joined the regular army on the outbreak of war. After volunteering for the commandos, he saw action in the Lebanon in 1941, where he allegedly had an altercation with a senior officer after calling him incompetent. Fortunately, SAS founder David Stirling stepped in and recruited Mayne for his new long-range fighting force in the North African desert. Mayne was eventually promoted to colonel and commanded the 1st SAS Regiment. It was while he was serving in Oldenburg in Germany in the latter days of the war that Mayne single-hand-edly rescued a squadron of troops, for which he was recommended for a Victoria Cross. But his truculent attitude to authority probably cost him the highest medal of honour. Stirling said of Mayne: ‘He was one of the best fighting machines I ever met in my life. He also had the quality to command men and make them feel his very own.’
After the war, and suffering from the effects of a back injury, Mayne returned to Northern Ireland but had difficulty coping with civilian life and volunteered for a polar expedition to the Antarctic. His health deteriorated however, and he came back to his home town of Newtonards to a job with the Law Society. His back pain got to the point where he could no longer even play rugby. Nothing, it seemed, could match up to the excitement of his playing days and war service, and he began to drink more; it is said he would challenge every man in a bar to a fight, and beat them all. One night after a drinking session, however, he was driving home when he crashed his Riley sports car and was killed at the age of just 40.
Mayne’s life has been the subject of several books, and a film has long been planned about him. In 2005, MPs attempted to have his Victoria Cross finally and posthumously awarded, but the Government turned them down. He is commemorated in his home town by both a statue and a road named after him.
Mayne was by far the most famous of the 1938 Lions, but for all of them the world changed a year later with the start of the war. It would be 12 long years before the Lions would tour again. They would do so in a world transformed beyond recognition, where the concept of Empire would become outmoded and would be replaced by the gradual end of colonies and protectorate and the move to the Commonwealth. Nothing diminished in any way, however, the desire of the people of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to have the British and Irish Lions visit their countries.
CHAPTER THREE KARL MULLEN’S HAPPY BAND Australia and New Zealand 1950
In the immediate post-war period, Great Britain, and to a lesser extent Ireland, had rather more to worry about than rugby. It was a time of strict austerity, and rationing still applied to many ordinary everyday items, including meat.
The tight rationing rules apparently did not apply to cigarettes, as the 1950 tourists were given their supply free of charge for the entire duration of the six-month-long tour to Australia and New Zealand in which they played 30 matches, including six Tests. It was to be the last time the Lions travelled by sea to the southern hemisphere. They sailed out on the SS Ceramic via the Panama Canal, and came back also travelling westwards, so it could be said that they sailed around the world just to play rugby. On the way home though, they took a shortcut via the Suez Canal and Mediterranean Sea en route from Sri Lanka, where they had played an unofficial match against a team representing the former Ceylon, before stopping for dinner in Mumbai, then known as Bombay.
More than a few of the players had seen service during the war or had undergone their two years’ mandatory national service in the forces, so they were used to being away from home for long periods. It was nevertheless particularly hard on newly married men or fathers with young children: ‘I had to leave an infant son behind and when I came back he was just so much bigger,’ as one 1950 Lion put it.
Two great characters of rugby and stars of that tour—both now in their late eighties—recently recalled what they were doing in the greatest skirmish of them all: the Second World War. It says a great deal about Dr Jack Matthews and Bleddyn Williams—and indeed all the rugby players who served in the war—that so many were anxious to get back to playing the game after what had been an ‘interesting’ time for them. Jack Matthews, who is now 88, managed to do both war service and national service, as he explained:
I was one of five children, with two sisters and two brothers, both of whom joined the army when war broke out. I was just starting to study medicine, but I wanted to join my brothers in action so I went off to Penarth without telling my parents and joined up as a fighter pilot.
I trained for five months of a six-month course and we were being taught to fly a new type of Spitfire, when my CO came up to me and said ‘Matthews, you’re out.’ I said ‘Beg your pardon, sir, what have I done wrong?’ He explained that they had just heard from the Home Office that I was a medical student, and I was thrown out because it was an exempt profession.
I spent the war qualifying as a doctor in Cardiff, but before I could finish, I was called up for national service. I said ‘Hang on, I’ve already done five months in the RAF, doesn’t that count?’ But Brigadier Hugh Llewellyn Glyn-Hughes, who was in charge of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) and also ran the Barbarians, persuaded me not to go back
