I’d like to welcome you to today’s Great Britain Lions celebration lunch at Headingley Carnegie Stadium.

The event is one of many being organised by Rugby League in Leeds to celebrate a 150 years of the sport in the city. My fellow trustees and I would very much like to thank Leeds Rhinos, Leeds Rugby Foundation and the Leeds Past Players Association for their support today. The club, its charity and former players do so much for Rugby League in the city and throughout the wider game and we are honoured and privileged to have been invited to take be part of these very special celebrations.

Today’s event is a celebration of the Great Britain Lions and we are delighted to have some former Lions with us here today. Whilst it remains to be seen whether we will ever see another Great Britain Lions tour in the traditional sense, the proud tradition of being a Lion – that is someone who has toured the southern hemisphere for Great Britain or England – continues to this day. Every Lion is justifiably proud of their achievement and it would be good to think that this country’s elite Rugby League players will one day get the opportunity to follow in the exulted footsteps of some of the legends who are here with us today.

I think I can confidently speak on behalf of my former team mates and for many others in the wider game when I say that we should all continue to offer our support to RFL Chief Executive Nigel Wood, his colleagues and those in the wider game who have put the restoration of Great Britain Lions tours back on the sport’s agenda.

I’d also like to pass on my thanks to the Rugby League Cares Heritage team, Professor Tony Collins who is one of RL Cares Trustees leading on our heritage activities and our recently appointed Heritage Manager, Victoria Dawson. I know that they plan to bring to life the history of the Lions through our specially created commemorative programme, a special viewing of some recently unearthed footage of the Lions on tour in 1914 and a display of some special associated heritage memorabilia. It’s remarkable to think that it is almost 100 years to the day that the England Rugby League team were in Australia playing in what has become commonly known as the Rorkes Drift test, after they pulled off one of the most sensational victories against such difficult odds.

Finally thanks to all those that are supporting our efforts as a member of the charity, many of whom are with us today. Trustees have recently appointed a Membership Manager, Kate Irwin to drive forward the membership programme for the charity. Kate’s role will ensure that we take care of our members through opening up many more opportunities to benefit them and the wider game. You can help us with these plans by getting in touch with Kate katharine.irwin@rlcares.org.uk or 07540636515 with any ideas of how you feel that charity can do more in this area and by encouraging others to join what is fast becoming the largest club in the sport. The simple reality is, with more members we can do so much more to help people right across the sport, especially those that are suffering hardship and need our help the most.

Thanks so much for supporting today’s event, I hope you have a wonderful afternoon!

Very best wishes,

Terry

Dear Guests

FIRST TEST

Golden crispy cod served with lemon mayonnaise and a wedge of onion bread ‘just like Hull’s Alf Francis loved’

or

Cream of Oldham white onion soup with crisp onion ribbons and a homemade roll ‘in honour of Oldham’s outstanding trio’

SECOND TEST

Seared supreme of ‘Arthur “Chick” Johnson’ chicken with thyme and red onion stuffing

or

Vegetable Wellington á la Wagstaff

All served on a front row of wilted savoy cabbage, a timbale of crushed buttered new potato and buttered cauliflower thyme sauce

THIRD ‘RORKE’S DRIFT’ TEST

Passion fruit Australian Mess, finished with fresh mango‘Just like the mess the Kangaroos were in after the Rorke’s Drift match!’

MENU

Itinerary

BORN ON THE 4TH JULY: THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL

match play

It was the match that was almost never played. A game that the team’s managers and players did not want. Yet it became arguably the greatest rugby league match ever played.

2014 is the centenary of the third test match played between Australia and Britain, then called the Northern Union, at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 4 July 1914.

Against all the odds, a British team at times down to nine fit men defeated the Australians 14-6 to lift the Ashes, a victory that continues to echo down the ages.

The match would come known as the Rorke’s Drift test, after Australian journalists compared the British players’ rearguard action with the 1879 British military victory over the Zulu army in South Africa. For rugby league, the match became a synonym for unquenchable bravery and determination, the very embodiment of the spirit of the game.

Warm UpNeil Wood - Master of Ceremonies.

Kick Off Mick Morgan � - Role Call & Grace.

Chris Rostron � - Rugby League Cares, Welcome.

Bob Bowman � - Leeds Rugby Foundation, 150 Years of Rugby League in Leeds.

1/2 Time - Lunch is Served.

2nd Half Tour Memories Q & A with David Howes.

Mike Stephenson - Rugby League Heritage.

Victoria Dawson - The 1914 Great Britain Lions Tour.

Winning Try - Raffle Draw.

Final Hooter Post-Match Refreshments

But it almost never happened. The tourists had arrived in Australia at the end of May and played six warm-up matches before the first test match. Although the first test was originally scheduled for 20 June, it was put back by mutual agreement to 27 June.

But the date for the second test match, 29 June, was not changed, so the two test matches were played within forty-eight hours of each other.

Faced with the third test match being played on 4 July, just five days after the second test, and a spate of injuries to star players, the two co-managers of the British tourists, St Helens’

Joe Houghton and Huddersfield’s John Clifford, asked the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL), the de facto governing body of the Australian game, to postpone the third test until August.

They wanted the match to be rescheduled after the tourists returned from the New Zealand leg of the tour in mid-August. They also proposed that the match be played in Melbourne, far away from rugby-playing New South Wales and Queensland.Ted Larkin, the NSWRL secretary, refused to re-arrange the match. When the British managers told him they would not play, he telegrammed the Northern Union in protest.

Football politicsThe NSWRL’s keenness to play three test matches in nine days has traditionally been blamed on the desire to milk the cash cow as quickly as possible. But the third test had always been scheduled for 4 July, even before the tourists left the UK. The British management’s proposal to reschedule the third test to August in Melbourne was a major revision to the agreed tour itinerary.

And when viewed in the wider sporting context it is easy to see why Larkin and the NSWRL did not want to change their plans. To counter the burgeoning popularity of rugby league, the NSW Rugby Union had invited the All Blacks over. They were to play

NSW the week after the league test. A week after that, on 18 July, the Wallabies would face New Zealand in a full-blown test match.

And at the start of August, Sydney would host the national Australian Rules carnival, when the six states would play each other in a major push to establish the Victorian code in Sydney. If rugby league had to wait until the middle of August to play the final test match, momentum would be lost and the initiative potentially passed to its rivals.

Orders from home Backs to the wall

The Man

Weakened teamWhen the team finally emerged onto the Sydney Cricket Ground pitch that afternoon, there were five changes from the side announced the previous Thursday. First choice players Gwyn Thomas, Johnny Rogers, Bert Jenkins and Fred Longstaff were all missing. Even Alf Wood, Thomas’s replacement at full-back, was playing with a badly broken nose.

The match did not start well. Immediately after the Australians had kicked off, Halifax’s Frank Williams injured his knee and spent the rest of the first half hobbling around the pitch, before going off permanently early in the second half. Douglas Clark broke his thumb and then he too was forced to go off in the second half after he fell awkwardly under Arthur Holloway’s tackle and dislocated his shoulder. When he realised he could no longer continue, Clark cried tears of frustration.

But the greater experience of the NU side told. Despite having only eleven fit players, they dominated play and led 9-0 at half-time, thanks to a try from Leeds’ Willie Davies and three goals from Oldham’s Alf Wood.

More than anyone, the victory was owed to Wagstaff. The Sydney Morning Herald praised his generalship: ‘he tackled with the tenacity of a grizzly bear’.

Australian captain Sid Deane, who would later play for Oldham and Hull, recalled that ‘Wagstaff was not only brilliant in attack and wonderful in defence but his leadership was a most important factor in the team’s success’.

Douglas Clark wrote simply, ‘Harold was the man’. And for the man himself, he told the press that ‘it was the hardest game of my career’.

Indeed, Wagstaff and Clark’s deeds that afternoon had earned them rugby league immortality. Not only had the team won against overwhelming odds, but in doing so they had taken international rugby league to a new level.

The game now had a tradition to live up to, and pantheon of greats for players to aspire to. The match would shape Ashes test matches for the rest of the century.

It was undoubtedly the greatest match in rugby league’s short, nineteen year history - and quite probably the greatest that will ever be played.

When the team finally emerged onto the Sydney Cricket Ground pitch that afternoon, there were five changes from the side announced the previous Thursday. First choice players Gwyn Thomas, Johnny Rogers, Bert Jenkins and Fred Longstaff were all missing. Even Alf Wood, Thomas’s replacement at full-back, was playing with a badly broken nose.

The match did not start well. Immediately after the Australians had kicked off, Halifax’s Frank Williams injured his knee and spent the rest of the first half hobbling around the pitch, before going off permanently early in the second half.

Douglas Clark broke his thumb and then he too was forced to go off in the second half after he fell In the second half, the Australians tried to take advantage of the eleven-man British side. Free-running South Sydney forward Billy Cann was moved out of the pack and into the backs. Australia were now playing with eight backs and five forwards against England’s seven backs and four forwards.

‘It hardly seemed possible that England could withstand such force of numbers’, wrote the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘but so desperately stubborn was the defence that Australia was frustrated at every move’.

But then, with twenty minutes to go, Wagstaff cut throughout the Australian defence and passed to Chick Johnson, the Widnes forward who had taken Williams’ place on the wing, who cut in from the wing and was left with only Howard Hallett, the Australian full-back, to beat.

Faced with the chance to seal the match, Johnson’s forward instincts took over and, to the surprise of Hallett, he dropped the ball to his foot, grubbered it past the full-back and dribbled it over the line to score. Wood converted the try but it was not over.

A few minutes later Oldham’s Billy Hall was taken off with concussion and Australia finally began to click. Wally Messenger and Sid Deane touched down for unconverted tries and at one point the British were down to just nine men when Stuart Prosser went down winded.

The whistle could not come too soon, and when it did, it was Wagstaff’s men who had won the Ashes with a historic 14-6 victory.

Back in England, the Northern Union committee received Larkin’s telegram with sympathy. Their stance was indicated by an unnamed ‘prominent forward’ in the touring party, who told the Sydney Morning Herald that the NU was ‘fully alive to the great possibilities of the thirteen-a-side code in NSW, and were not the men to sanction an action that would rob the Sydney public of witnessing the most important match of the tour’.

This was confirmed in the return telegram from Joe Platt, the NU secretary, which arrived at lunchtime the day before the match was due to take place: ‘we confidently anticipate that the best traditions of Northern Union football will be upheld by you. We hope that you will expend every atom of energy and skill you possess to secure victory; failing which, we hope you will lose like sportsmen.’

Despite this instruction, Joe Houghton still disagreed with the decision to go ahead with the match. It was left to his co-manager John Clifford to rally the players behind the decision just hours before the match.

‘You are playing a game of football this afternoon but more than that you are playing for England, and more even than that, you are playing for right versus wrong. You will win because you have to win. Don’t forget that message from home. England expects every one of you to do his duty.’

Two decades later, Harold Wagstaff remembered how moved his side were by Clifford, ‘I was impressed and thrilled as never before or since by a speech’. The players left the meeting in steely silence.

Photo of minutes that signed off the tour.

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