To be fair, in the middle Test of the three, the Lions were unlucky to get only a draw, but Harding’s men apparently enjoyed too much of the lavish hospitality of their hosts and greatly underperformed in the final deciding Test, in which the All Blacks ran riot, scoring 9 tries and 29 points in all against none by the tourists.
The 1908 Lions did not even go down fighting, but then there had been a strange atmosphere in the party ever since they had lost one of their best players in the middle of the tour. In the biggest scandal to engulf the early Lions, Frederick Stanley Jackson, a Cornish giant who played for Leicester, was alleged to have been a professional rugby league player called John Jones from Swansea. Jackson was a star player, a lethal goal kicker who had helped Cornwall to the county championship, which in turn gave them entry to the 1908 Olympic Games where the men from the Duchy won the silver medal, losing to Australasia, i.e. Australia and New Zealand combined.
An Olympic medallist and one of the best-known players in the sport of rugby union involved in a murky business—not surprisingly, the newspapers had a field day, and the RFU had to act. A terse telegram was sent to tour manager George Harnett: ‘Jackson is suspended. Return him forthwith.’
The player set off for Sydney, leaving his close friend and fellow Leicester player and Lion, John Jackett, in tears on the quayside. Jackett himself had a notorious past which was already well known—a muscular Adonis, he had posed as a nude model, strictly for art’s sake of course.
But Jackson never made it home. Instead, he was greeted by pressmen at Sydney, and categorically denied any knowledge of the charges against him. He then disappeared, only to resurface in New Zealand after the Lions had finished their tour. Jackson had gone back to find a Maori woman that he had met during the tour, and it truly was a love match—they had four children, one of whom, Everard, would become an All Black prop before losing a leg fighting in the desert campaign in the Second World War.
Happy with his new wife in his new homeland, Frederick Jackson also played for New Zealand—funnily enough, at rugby league. He was capped for his new country in 1910 against the Northern Union, the then name of the British rugby league touring side, which beat New Zealand 52–20. Jackson lived until 1957, and despite research by his family, no one has ever been able to prove whether he was indeed either Jackson or Jones. The man himself never let on.
The Jackson scandal was just one of several problems for the 1908 Lions. This debacle of a tour was to prove a catalyst for the biggest change in the set-up of the Lions. Before the next tour to South Africa in 1910, and stung by the fact that the ‘colonials’ had become the masters of world rugby, the four home unions took a hand and decided that, from then on, the tourists would represent them as fully as any side which turned out in the white, blue, green or red jerseys of their home unions. Players selected for Tests would also be recognized—by some people at any rate—as full internationalists. The British and Irish Lions were formally born, though not yet called Lions.
CHAPTER TWO THEN THEY WERE LIONS 1910–1938
Right from the start of the ‘official’ touring party superintended by the joint Committee of the Four Home Unions, often known since then as the Lions Committee, there were arguments about selection. The Welsh Union, appalled at what had happened in 1908, called on their fellow unions to select the best available players ‘irrespective of their social position’. The Welsh Union was correctly suspicious that the other unions, dominated by middle and upper-class interests, might prefer ‘gentlemen players’ rather than good honest stock from the Valleys. As a result, and with the Unions now fully behind the tourists, the first official British and Irish touring squad was as strong, if not stronger, than any of the parties who had gone south of the equator before them.
There was also recognition of the toll that injuries had taken on previous parties, as 4 replacements were later allowed to join the original 26 tourists. Of that 26, no fewer than 17 had already won caps for their country or would do so. The replacements were not too shabby either, as Eric Milroy, Alfred ‘Jim’ Webb and Frank Handford all represented Scotland, Wales and England respectively. Milroy suffered blood poisoning on the tour, which severely debilitated him; Webb switched to rugby league but went back to the mines; Handford enjoyed his time in South Africa so much that he emigrated there, as did fellow 1910 tourists Phil Waller and Kenneth Wood, neither of whom even bothered to go home after the tour.
The much-travelled Tom Richards, who had been capped for Australia, was then working in South Africa, for whom he was nearly selected. On the basis that he had once played a season in England at Bristol, he joined the Lions. Photographs in a ‘Pride of Lions’ exhibition at Twickenham showed him in both Australian and Lions colours—nationality was apparently a moveable feast in those days. Richards would go on to play for Australia again and then win the Military Cross for his bravery in the First World War, but he died young from the long-term effects of mustard gas.
Also gassed and decorated for heroism during 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