England vs France: 1908-14

Wobbly French start

England taught France to play the game, as it did all other countries. One of the early French devotees of the game and England's sport was Baron Pierre de Coubertin. But there has not always been an entente cordial between the two countries on the rugby field.

This week as Le Crunch at Twickenham approaches we shall talk about matches between the two countries, starting in 1908.

Then there was just the Four Nations. In 1910 France came in and it became the Five Nations, but England had been playing France even before then.

Baron de Coubertin got his ideas on sport from Rugby School and that had its flowering in the modern Olympic Games. De Coubertin was a referee. He refereed the first-ever final of the French club championship in 1892.

He imbued French rugby with a spirit of sportsmanship and it was not unknown in those days for the French to applaud good play by an opponent. That spirit may not have lasted!

There were teams labelled France which played against Civil Service (1893), Park House (1893), Frankfurt (1900), Moseley Wanderers (1900) and Bective Rangers (1905).

France first played a Test in 1906 when they played the All Blacks. There was a team called France to play the Springboks in 1907 but it was a pick-up team from chaps playing in Paris and hardly represented France.

France's second Test was against England.

22 March 1908: The match was played at Parc des Princes.

France had played New Zealand on New Year's Day. This was Test No.2. New Zealand had won 38-8. England won 35-8.

The day was fine but windy. England played with the wind in the first half and led 22-0 at the break. In the second half France had the wind and did much better.

England's flyhalf was the great Adrian Stoop who did so much to develop flyhalf play. The scrumhalf was Darkie Peters, who was of Jamaican extraction. The captain was Vincent Cartwright, a great rugby man, Oxford, Blue, Barbarians, president of the RFU, a solicitor with a great war record. And his nickname was Lump!

The French captain was Gaston Lane, a wing, who was killed in World War I.

The first Frenchman to score a try against England was Allan Muhr after some great work by Paul Maclos of Stade Français. Muhr was born in Chicago and was nicknamed Le Sioux. He died as a prisoner of war in World War II. He had been president of the French Rugby Federation. Emile Lesieur scored France's second try. He was the French sprint champion.

Arthur Hudson, the Gloucester wing, was not an original selection for the match but he scored four tries at Parc des Princes that afternoon, a feat repeated by Pieter Rossouw of South Africa in 1998, the last rugby Test played at the ground. Hudson scored the very first try in matches between England and France.

England scored nine tries, France two.

The referee for the match, who had also refereed France's first test, was Louis Dedet, a former Stade Français player.

5 January 1907: The match as played at the Athletic Ground, Richmond

This was France's first match across the English Channel. Again England scored five tries but Douglas Lambert, who was called Daniel, went one better than Arthur Hudson and scored five tries. He was killed in action in World War I, two months before his son was born.

At half-time the teams were, incredibly, level at 13-all but England ran away in the second half  and won 41-13, The score would have been much higher were it not for the brave tackling of the tiny French fullback Henri Isaac who was born in Guadeloupe and killed in World War I.

Again Allan Muhr scored a try for France, as did the captain Marcel Communeau, destined to be France's captain in its first Test win - against Scotland in 1911. Both France's tries were created by Charles Varreilles.

England lost newly capped fullback Harry Lee early in the first half.

1 January 1908: The match was played at the Colombes Stadium in Paris.

Snow fell most of the day, and the going was slippery but England's won 19-0. France lost two players, Alfred Mayssonnié, who was killed in World War I, and Paul Sagot,  early in the match but again Henri Isaac was heroic.

In 1908 France also played Wales.

30 January 1909: The match was played at Welford Road, Leicester

France were getting better and better, and it took England a half an hour to score. The second half was easier for the home side and they won 22-0, scoring six tries.

The outstanding English player was Edgar Mobbs of Northampton. There is a statue to him in Northampton's market square and an annual rugby match - The Mobbs Memorial Match. He was refused a commission because of his age (32!) in World War I and so enrolled as a private and then raised his own regiment. 400 men served with him of whom 85 survived. He was himself killed in action.

In 1909 France also played Wales and Ireland.

3 March 1910: The match was played at Parc des Princes.

Suddenly there was a Five Nations championship. France played its first match against Wales, its second against Scotland and its third against England.

This was France's best performance against England who won 11-3, three tries to one. Arthur Hudson was back scoring tries again, this time two of them.

Six of the chosen English side were unable to make the journey to Paris, and England fielded eight new caps.

Despite the loss of Gaston Lane the French were manful. Their pack stood up well to the English eight, fullback Julien Combe tackled in the fashion of Henri Isaac, and Marcel Communeau scored the try.

In the second half the French pack outplayed the English pack. Communeau scored next to the posts but England charged the conversion attempt down.,

It is said that at the final whistle the victors were more disappointed with their performance than the vanquished.

England won the championship,. France came last.

28 January 1911: The match was played at Twickenham.

This was France's first match at Twickenham which had been brought into Test use only the year before.

Daniel Lambert scored two tries as did Cherry Pillman, the great (and perhaps first) loose forward. England scored seven tries and won 37-0. Lambert scored 22 points with his tries, two penalty goals and five conversions.

France were missing five of the players who had beaten Scotland two weeks earlier and suffered injuries to François-Xavier Dutour, who was 92 when he died, Guillaume Laterrade and Georges Peyroutou, who later ran a plantation in Madagascar and was a president of the Malagasy Rugby Federation..

In the championship England came third, France fourth.

8 April 1912: The match was played at Parc des Princes.

The match was played on Easter Monday.

For the first time France had no new caps in its team!

England's victory was founded on a first-half display in which they scored 14 points from four tries. Their only score in the second half was from a  drop by flyhalf Harry Coverdale, who left the field injured later. In the second half Julien Dufau, who was killed in World War I, and Faillot scored tries for France.

England won the championship. France came last.

Dick Stafford played in the England pack but died later in the year of cancer of the spine. He was only 19 when he died.

The England captain was Vice-admiral Norman Wodehouse, CB, at one stage the Rear Admiral in charge of Gibraltar and then aide-de-camp to King George VI. In 1941 he was in command of an Atlantic convoy and was listed as missing, presumed drowned in 1941. At the time he was the Commander in Chief of North Atlantic command and aboard the submarine Robert L. Holt. In 1915 he received a silver medal for saving life.

25 January 1913: The match was played at Twickenham.

Vincent Coates scored three tries, Cherry Pillman two and Ronnie Poulton one as England won 20-0.

Again France had a brave fullback - Jean Caujolle of Tarbes.

England won the Grand Slam. France came last.

England's goal-kicking was poor. The Times reported: "There is an obvious lesson. If the team does not contain a place-kicker room must be found for one."

Things have not changed all that much!

13 April 1914: The match was played at the stadium in Colombes, Paris.

France scored first and were right in the game till half-time when England led 13-8. But England ran away with it in the second half and won 39-13.

England won the Grand Slam. France and Scotland did not win a match and they did not play each other because Scotland were angry with the behaviour of the Paris crowd the year before.

Ronnie Poulton scored four tries that afternoon. One of the great three-quarters of his day, he changed his name to Poulton-Palmer to inherit some money. He was shot by a sniper in Belgium in World War I. His last words are said to have been: "I shall never play at Twickenham again."

Cyril Lowe, a wing considered by some to be too small to play, scored a hat-trick of tries. He played in 25 consecutive matches for England and was at one stage England's most capped player. During World War I he was a fighter pilot. He is inspired a poem by PG Wodehouse, entitled The Great Day.

The crowd were vocal in their hostility to England.

There were no more matches for six years after this one, as World War I broke out..

Of the 30 players who played in this match, 11 were killed in World War I.

England: James Watson, nicknamed Bungy, who was drowned when a submarine sank the HMS Hawke on which he was a surgeon, Ronnie Poulton,  Arthur Dingle, a schoolmaster whose nickname was Mud, Francis Oakley, who was drowned as a submariner,  Arthur Harrison, who fought in the Battle of Jutland and was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his part in the action at Zeebrugge, and Robert Pillman, who was a brother of Cherry,

France: Marcel Burgun, who was shot down, Léon Larribau, Emmanuel Iguiniiz, Felix Fauré, and Jacques Conolh de Beyssac.

By Paul Dobson