Rugby-Pioneers

Cambridge University : Holidays in France...

Souvenir postcard of a Cambridge University XV enjoying French rugby in the beautiful medieval city of Carcassonne...

Sun... nature... good food... strong local teams (both Union and League)...  definitely a good place for a rugby break with friends...

From what I've read on the web, I understand that Cambridge teams (both RU and RL) have been regularly touring the region until now...

Having said that, I guess that local rugby in the 1920s wasn't exactly a gentlemen rugby for students... but tough grassroots rugby in rural France... "rugby de clocher" (belfry rugby) as we say in French where local teams (used to ?) show exacerbated rivalry against eachother...

Here is a larger picture of the C.U. team, if it could help someone to identify the team and date the picture.

Post-Scriptum for my Rugby League friends : Carcassonne is the hometown of French RL "superstar" from the 50s, Puig Aubert aka "Pipette"... another story...

 

Bad deal for Australia !

Our friends from Down Under messed up everything last week-end...

"Plan A" was to have France defeating Australia in Paris in Rugby Union, while at the same time the Kangaroos were supposed to celebrate another victory in 2008 Rugby League World Cup in Brisbane...

Things went all wrong... French fly-half David Skrela decided to miss no less that 6 easy penalty or drop kicks and let a good standing French side lose 13-18 vs Australia... At the same time, the Kiwis produced one of the biggest upsets in Rugby League history to become 2008 RL World Champions... As the newspaper read, the Kiwis "forced the engraver to scratch off the name of 'Australia' off the trophy"... 34-20 final score...

Bad deal for Australia, indeed !

Actually, my upper picture is the cover page of the programme of 3rd test match between Australia and France (yes, Rugby League !), in Sydney Cricket Ground, July 23rd. 1955. Not exactly my usual memorabilia, but nice gold and green however... (larger picture here @ Flickr )

Thinking about early France-Australia fixtures, let's also share this cover print of French sports magazine "Sporting" dated January 24th 1928, showing French international forward Jean Galia, future pioneer of Rugby League in France in the 30s, breaking the Waratahs' line. That day, New South Wales (touring in Europe) managed a short 11-8 victory over France in Paris...



Headlines read "Les Waratahs à Paris" (Waratahs in Paris), whereas small caption explains "Les Neo-Gallois du Sud ont battu l'Equipe de France par 11 à 8 - Une trouée des avants français : GALIA soutenu par MORERE à sa droite et CAZENAVE à sa gauche, est passé entre M.BLAIR d'une part, et W.BRECKENBRIDGE et G.STOREY" (need for a translation ?). Jean Galia belongs to the "Hall of Fame" of French rugby and surely deserves a full story one of these days...

But, say, the true reason of this Franco-Australian story today - half Wallabies, half Kangaroos - is to say "hello" and "thank you" to my friend Sean Fagan in Sydney... ;-)

("Sporting" :large picture here - king size picture there...)

rugby league, rugby union, wallabies, kangaroos, jean galia

"Contrechamp" : Springboks 1907

Dear Sandrine, I have been trying for ages to write a note called "Contrechamp"... and you will admit that it's not exactly obvious when my main topic is about rugby, in English moreover... Done deal, and end of private messages...

French cinema vocabulary... "Shot - Reverse Shot" or "Champ - Contrechamp" in French...

"Champ" : Paul Roos' Springboks in Paris, Parc des Princes, January 3rd 1907, before crunching 54-6 a Paris team (9 players from Stade Français incl. Combe, Lesieur, Jérome, Galichon...) NB : the "true" Equipe de France was playing in England two days after...

"Contrechamp" : 12 French press photographers... I've never seen so many of them in my old documents ! The Springboks, stopping over in Paris after their triumphant tour in Great Britain in 1906, were celebrated as rugby "masters"... enough to deserve the front page of French main sports magazine "La Vie Au Grand Air" (cf below : Morkel kicking while Roos is holding the ball)



The pictures don't come from the same newspaper... the upper one comes from "Les Sports Illustrés", the bottom one from "La Vie Au Grand Air"... Funnily, there was more competition in French sports press 100 years ago than today...

PS : I know that apartheid was officially established in 1948, but it's worth mentionning that Paris team was captained by a coloured player, Georges Jérome from Stade Français... a gentleman famous enough (2 international caps, 5 championship finals) to appear twice on the cover page of "La Vie au Grand Air" in 1905...

 

rugby, springboks, paul roos, contrechamp

The Rugby world is a village...

10.41 am today : the stats of my website (cf the "Live Traffic Feed" widget, in the right column) show a strange configuration ...

The last 10 visitors come from 10 different countries and from 5 different continents... : Singapore, France, South Africa, USA, Netherlands, Sweden, Laos, Australia, Italy and India (googling for "secret weapon postcards"...)

I wasn't aware that Rugby Memorabilia was so... universal ! (so to say, Google likes me...)

Checking the last 25 connections brings almost the same picture, adding visitors from Canada, Ireland, England, Germany, Thailand, Argentina, Wales, Korea and Japan...

The Rugby world is a village, I said...

PS : Hey, how would you like to illustrate internet traffic analysis with rugby images ?!?... instead, here is the nice cover of boys' magazine "The Captain", November 1931... universal picture, as well !

(large pic here @ Flickr)

rugby

Rugby, Weapons & Cycles - St Etienne

First, this is a wonderful early 1900 rugby illustration (no date...) by E.Letellier... All what I like in collecting rugby...

Second, this is the cover page of the catalogue of one of French leading mail order companies at the time: Manufacture Française d'Armes et Cycles de St.Etienne (French Factory of Weapons & Cycles in St.Etienne), a.k.a. "ManuFrance", founded in 1885 in St.Etienne.

"ManuFrance" went bankrupt in the 80s, but the brand surely remains strong in the memory of  French readers... "ManuFrance" is strongly tied, on one hand, to its own monthly magazine "Le Chasseur Français" ("The French Hunter")- a "must read" in rural France (and, say, a real source of fun for urban and modern readers...), and, on the other hand, to the local (Association) Football team A.S.St Etienne which was sponsored by ManuFrance in its golden years... (Champions' League final lost in 1978 to Bayern Munich...)

Back to the 1900s..., "ManuFrance" was then manufacturing all kind of rugby football equipement - mostly leather goods - i.e. balls, shoes - but also rugby kits... here are a few pages, from resp. 1911 and 1924.

P.S. : this website is entirely dedicated to pre-WW2 rugby... so, this is a unique opportunity to share this fine cover from "Le Chasseur Français" dated 1954, by French artist Paul Order.

(large pictures, top down, here, here and there... and the last one also...)

Colonial Rugby ! Noumea, New Caledonia c.1905

Colonial Rugby !

I like searching for old rugby pictures from "unusual" countries... I mean countries where you shouldn't expect rugby to be played in the early days of the XXth century... We all know that British merchants, sailors and soldiers had been playing the game almost everywhere possible, but I am always surprised to find rugby games in former French colonies (Africa, Indochina) or territories...

Here is a postcard showing a football rugby game ("une partie de football à l'Anse Vata") in Noumea, New Caledonia.

Should I recall that New Caledonia is a French Overseas Territory in the Pacific Ocean (cf map here, half-way from Australia, New Zealand and Fidji... Hence a natural place for rugby, even though, in fact, I am afraid that Caledonian rugby is not as developped as it could (should) be ; I am sure that French rugby could benefit from the input of Caledonian athletes if they are made from the same steel as other ruggers from the Pacific Region...

Back to my postcard (hi res picture here)... there is no date, but it comes from a postcard series issued c.1905... no indications about the players neither, even if we could think of military teams. Any hint would be welcome... !

You can see the ball (a bit fuzzy...) one meter above the head of the fullback in white... I always wonder how sports photographers were working in these early days to capture rugby action... he's almost missed the ball, but it remains a good action shot...

Anse Vata ("Vata  Bay") is now part of Noumea, but in the early 1900s the place was unhabited and it only was a destination for leasure, riding and walking. A velodrome was built there as early as 1895... and cycling remains one the most popular sports in New Caledonia ! Here is the track in this other postcard from the same series (I've found this picture on the net - I don't know who to credit...)



Well ! this post is also a small tribute to the Pacific Islanders who'll be touring France next Saturday... let's hope that the game will be more attractive than this sad France v Argentina last week...

And, before leaving, what about this sunset on Vata Bay... ? New Caledonia is possibly one of the most beautiful places on Earth...



(CC BY-NC-SA imageo - Thank you)

rugby, new caledonia, noumea, anse vata

Art & Rugby ! Delaunay "Equipe de Cardiff" 1913

What a discovery (for me, at least...) !

My friend Pierre, sucessful entrepreneur and former rugger at Stade Français and RC Le Chesnay (the only French club with no website ??), referred to me last week this fantastic painting from Robert Delaunay, named "Equipe de Cardiff", first exhibited in 1913 and now at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Artists have often seen sports as an opportunity to capture modernity, movement, speed, bodies, colours... this painting brings all this, and much more... mixing the rugby game, the Eiffel tower (a recurring theme in Delaunay's work) and Paris Ferris Wheel, an aeroplane, advertising (Astra is a aeroplane manufacturer) in a splendid collage-like composition. Quote from Delaunay "Movement is produced by the rapport of odd elements, of the contrasts of colors between themselves which constitutes Reality"

The group of ruggers is said to be a photography of French (and not from Cardiff, I'm afraid...) players published in La Vie Au Grand Air, but did not manage to find it... Let's also remember that this pre-ww1 era was a great time for aviation pioneers (the Wright Bros first flying in 1903... Louis Bleriot crossing the Channel in 1909...). Here is (more or less) the same plane flying over Paris...

Interestingly, Delaunay worked out several other versions of his "Equipe de Cardiff" between 1912 and 1922... I've found three others now exhibited in Paris, Eindhoven (Van Abbemuseum) and Edinburgh (National Galleries of Scotland).

You will find Delaunay's bio (in English) and some other paintings on this nice website.

Enjoy !

(all pictures are copyrighted - credit to their respective owners)

rugby, Delaunay

Galllery of freaks, 1899 - This is not rugby...

Flipping through the pages of a 1899 French Sports Newspaper ("Le Sport Universel Illustré"), I suddenly faced this incredible gallery of Music-Hall "freaks" riding their bicycle... All of them appeared in a show in London... brrr, it reminds me of "Elephant Man"...

From left to right, and from top to bottom, here are "Le Pédaleur à la tête de veau" ("calf-head cyclist"), "Le cycliste à la tête de chien" ("dog-head cyclist"), "Le pédaleur-squelette" ("skeletton-cyclist"), "La cycliste barbue" ("bearded-woman cyclist"), "Le cycliste cul-de-jatte" (it's explicit...), "Le cycliste manchot" ("no-armed cyclist"). (click for lager pics).

Which one is your favorite ?

rugby, freaks