Varsity match was all important

CAMBRIDGE, Wales and Lions wing Rowe Harding –a future High Court judge – was a wonderfully acute and pithy observer of the rugby scene in the mid 1920s when Cambridge University were at their absolute zenith and Cambridge generally was the crucible of world class Olympic athletes, rowers, cricketers and golfers.

Despite criticism, Harding, below, made no apologies for a myopic professional approach to the game, for one term at least.

“It has been said that the three-quarter line of another Cambridge college cost more than the Wigan Rugby League team’s three- quarter line; but that is a picturesque exaggeration.

“To me however, as to all the other members of the rugby side, the only thing that mattered in the Michaelmas term was the winning of the Varsity match. All other things were merely side issues. We played rugby, talked rugby, thought rugby, and dreamed rugby. For one term, we were professional gladiators, devoting all our time and energies to winning the Varsity match.

“I once made this confession at a rotary club lunch in Swansea, and the statement was considered so alarming that it was quoted in nearly every newspaper in the country… I am unrepentant, and still maintain that it is the duty of every member of a university side to make the Varsity match, for the time being, his chief interest in life.

“A graduate of Oxford made a speech some time ago, in which he deplored the fact that the spirit of competition was creeping into sport at Oxford –I cannot resist interposing here the remark of another friend of mine, who said he had not seen any evidence of it.”