PETER JACKSON

LONG before they began losing their way on the field at the Arms Park, England once endured the absurdity of losing a player on their way to Wales.
For their pioneering journey across the Severn shortly before Christmas 1882, the RFU dispatched 16 players to Swansea only to discover upon arrival that one of them, Phillip Newton, had taken a wrong turn or two on the trip westwards from Oxford’s dreaming spires.
Whatever the reason, perhaps a wheel falling off his stagecoach or the horses running out of steam before they could reach the Great Western Railway stati...