HCup is back next Saturday !
During pool rounds, six English teams (Northampton, Saracens, London Irish, Bath, Leicester, Wasps) will play vs six French teams (Castres, Clermont, Toulon, Biarritz, Perpignan, Toulouse).
HCup (or so...) and "crunches" between British and French teams started back in April 1892 when Rosslyn Park of London and Stade Français of Paris played the first ever rugby fixture between a British side and a "Continental" team.
This game, played in Levallois near Paris, turned out to be a popular event attracting several thousand spectators... an easy win for Rosslyn (can't find out the exact score in my documents... but 'nil' for Stade Français...). The illustration above - published in French newspaper "Le Monde Illustré", April 1892 - gives you some flavours of the game (also cf these previous posts here and there)
After the game, a special commemorative sculpture was presented by Lady Dufferin, wife of the British Ambassador, to Park captain E Figgis, and now resides at Rosslyn Park. The beautiful and delicate silver sculpture portrays a symbolic branch with laurel leaves intertwined with English oak leaves. A medallion bears the date 18th April 1892. (picture courtesy of Stephen Cooper of Rosslyn Park and rugbyremembers.co.uk - thank you Stephen!)
Two years later in March 1894, the same two teams met again in Paris (Bécon Les Bruyères) and, to everyone's surprise, Louis Dedet's Stade Français managed a short but historical 9 - 8 victory versus E.Figgis' Rosslyn Park... the first defeat of a British side in an international football game... a milestone in the history of French rugby... and an apportunity to share this "cartoon" report published in "L'Universel Illustré", March 1894, showing merely all aspects of the game!
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Illustrations by Louis Bombled show various moments of the game... large picture here and let's zoom...
Stade Français captain Louis Dedet is acclaimed by the crowd...
Wild ruck (NB : Rosslyn lost two injured players during the game...)
Dribbling contest...
Kicking...
Say, the actual pictures published in another newspaper ("Le Soleil du Dimanche") show far less dramatic action... but, as the motto says: when the legend is more interesting than reality, just print the legend...
PS: if you can read French, check related newspaper articles here (1892), here (1894) and there (1894).
