the war was Stanley Williams, the brilliant full-back of the 1910 party. He was another Lion to be caught up in a huge row between administrators, the Welsh union objecting when England selected Williams despite him having been born in Monmouthshire, then playing for Newport and having taken part in an international trial in Wales. Perhaps sickened by the whole affair, Williams played just one season for England before retiring at the age of 25.
The Lions had other stars, notably Charles Henry ‘Cherry’ Pillman of Blackheath and England who was reckoned to have single-handedly revolutionized wing forward play with his audacious and inventive skills. His new tactic of detaching from the scrum to challenge the fly-half changed the way the game was played.
The visitors were captained by Dr Tom Smythe of Malone and Ireland, already renowned as a fine leader of rugby men who had been captain for Ireland against Wales earlier in the year, and who had also been a locum doctor in Newport, where the local club was in its pomp and supplied no fewer than seven of the 1910 Lions.
These Lions were definitely an improvement on previous touring squads, but South African rugby had continued to develop, and in 1906 the original Springboks had toured Britain and Ireland, losing to Scotland but drawing with England and beating Wales and Ireland. Playing in their new colours of blue jerseys, white shorts and red socks, the Lions were unbeaten in five matches in Western Province but on moving north to Griqualand West, the Lions succumbed twice in a place where they had lost twice in 1903. And as on that previous tour, they also lost to Transvaal twice.
The first Test in Kimberley was played without the injured Pillman and was lost 14–10, the first try being scored by Alex Foster who would go on to captain Ireland. The adaptable Pillman returned for the second Test, playing at fly-half, and completely dominated play in an 8–3 victory in Port Elizabeth. The Springbok captain Bill Millar was later moved to write that ‘if ever a man can have won an international match through his own inspired and lone-handed efforts, it can be said of the inspired black-haired Pillman’.
No one could know at that time that the deciding Test in Cape Town would be the last played by the British and Irish Lions for 14 years. It ended in an ignominious 21–5 defeat for the visitors, who were hampered by the loss of their full-back early in the match—there were no substitutions for the Lions in those days.
Cherry Pillman went on to inspire England to four successive international championships, which France had joined to make the Five Nations. All five of those nations would then be involved in the war that was supposed to end all wars. They would be augmented by many men from South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, including a sizeable number of rugby players. In total, some 125 rugby internationalists from the eight major playing nations would pay the ultimate price in service of their country. Among their number would be several British and Irish Lions, including 1904 captain Dr David Bedell-Sivright, Phil Waller, Eric Milroy and Blair Swannell, who was awarded a posthumous Military Cross for his gallantry at Gallipoli.
Yet perhaps the most extraordinary story of heroism by a Lion who toured in 1910 came some years after the war. Harry Jarman, a tough forward from Pontypool who played for Newport, sacrificed his own life to save a group of children at Talywain colliery in 1928. The children were playing on a colliery railway when Jarman, then working as a blacksmith at the pit, spotted some loose wagons heading for the youngsters. Without hesitation, he threw himself into the path of the wagons and derailed them, his consequent injuries proving fatal. Tackling a runaway train some 18 years after his tour, aged 45, and with nothing more than his own shoulders—in the long annals of their history, can there be any more outstanding example of the courage of a Lion?
When rugby returned to a sort of normality after the war, clamour grew for the British and Irish unions to send a touring party to the southern hemisphere again. The next tour would be to South Africa in 1924, and from then on the tourists would bear their immortal name, the Lions.
As with every other activity in the British Empire, after Armistice Day in 1918 the sport of rugby was determined to get back to its usual state as quickly as possible. In 1919, a team from the New Zealand forces triumphed against their opponents in Britain and stopped off to wallop several South African sides on the way home. The Springboks toured New Zealand and Australia in 1921, and the quality of their play was dazzling. But as in so many strands of life in Britain and Ireland, a return to prewar normality was just not possible for rugby in the home countries due to the colossal number of deaths and injuries sustained among a generation of young men.
The number of internationalists killed during the hostilities—30 from Scotland and 27 from England alone—shows the scale of the losses. The worldwide influenza epidemic after the war also took its toll. It was going to take a good few years for a new generation to come through to replace those who had gone.
The political situation in Ireland also caused problems. The 1920 partition of Ireland into the 26 counties of the Free State, later the Republic of Ireland, and the six counties of Northern Ireland, had been mirrored by rugby much earlier. In 1874, the Irish Football Union had been formed from clubs in Leinster, Munster and parts of Ulster, while the Northern Football Union of Ireland, founded in the same year, was an association of clubs centred mainly on Belfast. With Ireland still a single political entity under the control of Westminster at that time, the two associations amalgamated to form the Irish Rugby Football Union in 1879. When partition took place, the IRFU Committee resisted attempts to politicize rugby and took the decision—unpopular in some areas, too—that it would continue to govern the sport in all 32 counties. By and large, and despite many problems down the years, the IRFU has remained united in the cause of rugby for all of the island of Ireland. It remains an intriguing question, given the strong feelings that partition and subsequent ‘Troubles’ have evoked, as to whether the British and Irish Lions would have continued to represent all five nations in these islands had not the IRFU taken that momentous decision to stay united. Certainly, there would have been a lot less fun without all the Irish tourists.
Arguably the greatest damage done to rugby union and to the Lions tours in the inter-war years came from the Great Depression. Money was scarce from the early 1920s onwards, and most players simply could not afford to take months off work, while employers became increasingly reluctant to give even unpaid leave of absence as this meant holding a job open for someone who might return from a tour with a serious injury, which was often the case in years to come. Other players took the money on offer from rugby league and switched codes rather than pursue caps and a tour with the Lions, which was really the only ‘reward’ that rugby union had to offer.
When the Great Depression arrived from 1929 onwards, the situation worsened considerably, and not even a sport that was so resolutely middle-class in most areas of these islands could escape the ravages of economic turmoil. Less damage was done in the southern hemisphere, though in Australia the economic situation probably helped the professional version of the oval ball game, rugby league, to achieve the dominance over union which it still enjoys.
Another problem was that the home unions still did not take the concept of a touring team entirely seriously. Their bread and butter was the international championship, which largely earned the money to bankroll the unions—there were no formal leagues in those days, and no television riches, and the Five Nations matches were for a long time the principal earners of cash. No one had any money left over to invest in a tour that was still seen as a luxury.
These problems meant that in the 21 years between the wars, just three Lions tours took place, compared to four in eight years between 1903 and 1910 inclusive. The first post-war tour to South Africa in 1924 may have been disappointing in terms of results—they were the first tourists to have a win record of less than 50 per cent—but at least they did return with a priceless asset.
No one seems entirely sure where the name ‘Lions’ came from. The official branding of the 1924 party and indeed subsequent parties was the British Isles Rugby Union Team, or BIRUT. The biruts? Fortunately, some ties made for
