The Worst Ever?
By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P.
DURING my lifetime, so far as I know, the favourite has lost the University Rugger Match only once. That, and here the letters begin to pour in, was in 1947, when Oxford, the better side both on past performance and on the day itself, were beaten by two penalty goals (6 points) to nothing whatever (nil). .
In 'Varsity Rugger you know at the start that the best team will win. Phil Macpherson's Oxford Scottish Jot do not suddenly lose their form. - If Welsh wizards like Windsor Lewis, Guy Morgan, Wilfred Wooller or Cliff Jones go temperamental, they do so on some other day. This year every- one said that -Oxford were the best team. They were the best team. So they won.
There is another thing about the University Rugger Match. It is never a bad match. 1925? 1926? 1909? Well, in 1925 Cambridge won by 33 points to 3. In 1926 Cambridge won by 30 points to 5. Painful ? Yes, to all men of good taste. Bad matches? Yes, obviously. But those who remember the running of T. E. S. Francis or of Tom Devitt or the Welshman -or Hamilton-Smythe will not say,these were bad matches. 1909? I was rising eighteen months at the time, but I am told that Oxford won by the record margin of 35 points to 3 ; that Ronnie Poulton scored five tries, and that all those who were sufficiently , well educated to profit by the experience were exhilarated. The ' University Rugger Match may sometimes be uneven, but it is never bad.
I have seen some terrible games in the Cup Final. If I must speak the truth, I begin with the Huddersfield-Preston affair in 1938 and work up. But by the time I have reached Leicester City and Wolves in 1949 I have not climbed ninch higher. Indeed, when you do get a game like Manchester United and Blackpool in 1948, a game which twinkled with the stars, a game in which everyone really played football, you remember it all your life. But-in the 'Varsity Rugger Match I have never seen teams overcome -by the great crowd or so obsessed with the will to win that they forgot what playing ability they had. I have seen poor teams—if it comes to that I saw two of them last Tuesday— but I have not yet seen two teams so poor on the day that they could provide neither transient excitement nor some enduring and pleasurable memory. Tuesday really is an example of what I mean, an example of how even the poorest of University Matches is always like a Manchester, lit to glory by a sudden shaft of sunlight. Here were two teams without star, excepting Oxford's Boobbyer, great centre three-quarter of last year and the year before, who, this year, had promised little and performed hardly at all. Here were two teams without notable achievement. Cambridge had been beaten four times and Oxford five. To make matters even more discouraging, there was ground frost overnight, followed by what in December passes for warm sun, so that while the ground remained hard underneath and even in patches on top, there was a cold stickiness about the surface which made it easier to slip than to run ; and when the sun began to go down, which was before the kick-off at 2.15, the cold came back to deaden-- finger-ends. So no one in the 40,000 crowd expected great foot- ball. No one got it—except in the two memorably glorious flashes which I will describe in due course.
The forwards were evenly matched and at least up to average. If Cambridge got rather more of the ball from the tight scrums, Oxford got rather more of it from the line-outs, except when it was vice versa. So far as share of the ball went, each side had a fair chance to shine and to win. Neither shone, and Cambridge did not even win. Cambridge had two serious weaknesses. One was at scrum half. Until late in the second half poor Harrison could do nothing right. Sometimes he was altogether bottled by the Oxford wing forwards. At other times—and this was worse— he sent his passes either rolling along the ground or behind his man. Tingling fingers could not gather the rolling ball. They knocked it on, which meant, if Cambridge were lucky, a scrum, or, if Oxford were awake, an enemy rush with the feet: When Harrison's passes went behind his man, it meant at best*that whoever gathered the pass was tackled in possession or at worst that no one gathered it at all—and there was another enemy foot-rush. • - These forward feet-rushes are serious enough at any time, but they can be disastrous if your full-back happens to be off form ; and that brings me to the second Cambridge weakness. T. U. Wells came to the 'Varsity Match with the honour fresh upon him of selection for a Final England Trial. Perhaps the fates thought that in consequence he was becoming insolent. Anyway, if he went to the right for a bouncing ball, the ball bounced to the left. It he got his kicks in at all, they were sliced and made little ground. Several times they were charged down. If he kept to his position, Cambridge attacks were stifled for want of an extra man. If he daringly, joined in the attack, his own line was left open to the enemy. Everyone has these days, days when shoulders curve to the earth and muscles set like cement ; and when they come, your side loses.
What of Oxford during all this ? Their forwards got their share of the ball, and Spence, their scrum half, sent out a rocket- like service. But nothing much came of it because Boobbyer passes the ball to his wing about as freely as Seiior Peron passes meat to Britain. All through the match there were only two movements in which the ball came along the line and actually reached the wing. So what with bad Cambridge passing and Boobbyer's no passing at all, half-time arrived with only one score, a try by the Oxford forward, Bullard, after Wells had failed to reach a wild back-pass almost on his own line.
Then, with twenty minutes of the second half gone, something happened which I shall always remember. -Wells had gathered a loose ball in his own twenty-five, and decided to launch an attack instead of kicking for touch. He ran a few yards, but, when challenged, kicked weakly along the ground, although there were two Cambridge men outside him. The ball trickled towards Brewer, the Oxford left wing, but Brewer did not trickle towards the ball. He swooped on it, was through the Cambridge three- quarter line before anyone had a chance to shift his weight from left to right, and there was no full-back in the wide open space. Bullard kicked the goal. That was 8-0 and the end of the match. From that moment Cambridge were doomed. .
But it was not the end of the game. Six and a half minutes later, when the mists were closing in and the frost was beginning to retouch the chipped grass, an Oxford forward caught the ball on the Cambridge twenty-five and sent it back to Baker at fly- half. Baker caught it on the run and cut to the right, seemingly into the line-out. After perhaps four strides he swerved to the left, then suddenly was moving to the right again and facing Wells three yards from the line. At the last second, just as Wells flung himself, Baker flung the, ball to the left and there was a great, hulking Oxford forward, Wydell, to clutch it and labour over the line. Baker's run had all the artistry, all the effortless grace of a swallow diving in the evening sun—and it would have come to-nothing if a great cow of a man had not had the inspired wit to get himself in a straight line, at the right second, from A to B. There, -for ten seconds, was football as I like to see it. Bullard converted the try, and 13-0 was the final score.
This was the worst 'Varsity Match I have ever seen. I enjoyed it. The- 'Varsity Match never lets you down. If the game happens to be poor, you are pleased to think how much better it was in your day ; and if, as so often happens, it is a great game or has greatness in it, time and age cease to matter. You keep young in the memory of it until the end of your days-
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