COLCHESTER RUGBY FOOTBALL CLUB
THE EARLY 1950s
BRIAN HULSE O.B.E.– CRFC 1948-1960
I moved to Colchester in 1948 and
joined the Club in October of that year.
At that time we ran two sides, the First XV and the Ravens. We played in a field off Gosbecks Road
and it was a feature of Saturdays that the team playing at home was expected to
turn up early and clear the pitch of cow pats, the farmer having removed the
beasts in the morning. This wasn't
as vital a chore as happened weekly at Norwich, for when they moved from the
ground beside the gasworks, where the soil was so black and foul that an
abrasion sometimes took weeks to heal, the Norwich team and the visitors lined
up across the field with buckets and advanced in echelon picking up stones. I recall doing this when we played
there for at least the first two years.
Our headquarters was the Red Lion where we repaired after the game for
baths and tea with the visitors.
The management put about four bathrooms at our disposal, which was
barely adequate, and of course the cunning home players frequently spilled over
to other bathrooms in the hotel.
This was certainly not welcomed by the manager not least when on one
occasion a bath was allowed to overflow and the Manager's wife was heard to
berate the home team captain with a tale of water 'cascading' down the
stairs. She was still less pleased
on another occasion when she could not get into her own bathroom which it
turned out was occupied by the captain of the Ravens, one Mick Rouse, alas no
longer with us.
Of course we provided all our own
kit and it is extraordinary how many different shades of black there are, from
near white through the greys to in the case of our jerseys the all too rare
pristine black. And we were
responsible for laundering as well, that is if the garments saw the light of
day from one week to another. When
I came to Oxford in 1960 I was for some years Treasurer of the Oxford R.F.C.
and was aghast when I was presented with a bill for such things as strapping
and vaseline, and that was forty years ago; I wonder what such things cost
clubs today. In the fifties if a
forward produced a tiny pot of vaseline before the match to smear round his
ears in the naïve hope that it would last him a few weeks he was quickly
disillusioned when it was pounced upon by the rest of the pack.
As far as I can remember I only
played on the Gosbecks Road ground for the 1948/49 season and I think it was in
the summer of 1950 that we moved to Mile End, no doubt much to the relief of
the manager of the Red Lion, and his wife!. This pitch was a vast improvement, even if the approach down
a muddy farm track left much to be desired. A goodly number of us spent a part of that summer preparing
the concrete base for a large hut that was to be a tearoom and bar. The changing accommodation came much
later and at first we used that provided by the Town Council who owned the
ground. We also decorated the interior of our new clubhouse and I think that
some of us were pleased to find that emulsion paint, which was quite new to the
DIY market, was a vast improvement on the distemper that we had previously been
accustomed to daubing on walls with less than pretty results.
The hut had cross ties across the
various rooms, including the bar, and I mention this because of the night that
D.L.(Sandy) Sanders of Ipswich Y.M.C.A., displayed his extraordinary strength
in hanging by his toes from one of the beams and drinking a pint of
bitter whilst upside down! The
Ravens had played the Garrison that afternoon and one of their team, a P.T
instructor, thought he could do it, but he couldn't even get to the point of
hanging by his toes let alone drinking the beer. The first time Sandy played for England he insisted on
appearing in the programme as "D.L.Sanders Ipswich YMCA &
Harlequins"; I still have the programme! He was described by a touring All Black at that time as the
best front row forward in the four home countries and, as most will know went
on to become President of the R.F.U.
During my time with Colchester
our notable fixtures were, to the north, Ipswich, Ipswich Y.M.C.A. and Norwich;
to the west Cambridge, Bishops Stortford, Old Cantabrigians and Shelford; to
the south, Chelmsford, Southend, O.Westcliffians and Met. Police 3 District;
and to London, Wasps Vandals and Saracens 'A'. Not many of us had cars and we went to all away matches by
coach piloted, for many years, by a long suffering driver by the name of Alf
who did us so well that we made him an honorary member; from then on he wore
the club tie with some pride. Some
of the clubs that I see featured in league tables nowadays weren't even in
existence then and I well remember playing in an exhibition match on a soccer
ground in Braintree where an enterprising enthusiast had set up a PA system on
the touchline so that he could explain the game to the spectators; both of
them.
We played the Garrison from time
to time but it was not easy to give them a permanent fixture because their
ability to raise a side was dependent on the incumbent Army units and the
keenness of one of their soldiers to do the admin. If we had been able to play them on Wednesdays it might have
been easier because they were all keen on getting wekend leave as often as they
could. When there was a unit like
the Welsh Regiment in situ it was all we could do to beat them but this was
rare. At one time there was a keen
young subaltern frequently to be seen in the vicinity of the barracks dashing
around on a motor-bike trying to raise a side on a Saturday morning.
We had a number of Eastern
Counties players, like Johnny (a.k.a. Jerry) Bland, who captained the Wasps,
the Counties and the London
Counties, Donald Bland, who also played for the Wasps, the Counties and for the
London Counties team that were the only side to beat the Springboks on a muddy
day at Twickenham on their 1952 tour (sadly both these brothers are now long
gone). Like, also, Gordon Goodwin,
Gordon Hockley who came to us from Wasps and ultimately returned to play for
his native Norwich, Brian Borges, Michael Lusty (and me!).
Other names that come to mind are, Tom Hollingdale (Vicar of St.
Peters) who was our President and a Welsh international of the twenties and
H.B.T.(Teddy) Wakelam who was a pre-world war two sports correspondent for the
Daily Telegraph and who commentated at Twickenham and at Wimbledon (even before
Dan Maskell!). He it was to whom
we owed our press coverage because even in his advancing years he was
frequently seen on the touchline with our tiny handful of supporters. There was not a lot of joy for those
long suffering rugby aficionados any more than there was for the stalwart band
of ladies who provided tea on Saturday afternoons.
Brian Hulse
(One time player, captain
and Honorary Treasurer of Colchester R.F.C.)
