News Detail
Sports Colours
I asked for us to start with the Kaye’s House hymn, ‘Jerusalem’, this morning, given it evokes the film ‘Chariots of Fire’ and track and field events from the 1924 Olympics in Paris – and have asked that we finish this morning with ‘Guide me, O thou great Jehovah’, a hymn (alongside ‘Calon Lan’) strongly associated with Welsh rugby – and which our boys’ rugby players on tour in March will hear delivered passionately and thunderously in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff for the Wales vs Scotland (Six Nations) game. The Scots will answer with a rousing ‘Flower of Scotland’.
I wonder if a few of you know the history of rugby as a sport.
In 1823, a schoolboy (William Webb Ellis) at Rugby School in England is said to have "show[n] a fine disregard for the rules of [soccer], as played [at the] time" by picking up the ball and running to the opponents'. The Rugby World Cup trophy is named after this schoolboy and the birth of the game – the Webb Ellis Cup.
A Shawnigan team played at Rugby School, the home of rugby the sport, at their International Rugby Sevens Tournament in 2017 as part of the School’s 450th anniversary.
Other schools in England created their own sports in the 18th and 19th centuries: the Field Game and the Wall Game at Eton; and Harrow football.
The boarding school I attended was founded in 1382 and invented its own game in the late 17th century. It was originally played down the length of College Street near the cathedral with each team trying to move a ball from one end to the other with no rules – a rather chaotic and somewhat violent game for schoolboys.
The game was then moved to the top of a local hill above the water meadows. The walls of the street were replaced with grades 8 and 9 lining the side of the grassy pitch, forming parallel walls to keep the ball in play – and, inevitably, there were injuries with rogue balls being kicked into the spectating juniors.
By the time I was there, the game had evolved into an inter-house tournament with different-sized teams.
Winchester College Football was our main sport in term II – preceded by soccer in term 1 and cricket in term III – and was compulsory for all.
Last year, I spent a lunchtime trying, firstly, to persuade Miss Russell that the sport existed and, secondly, trying to explain the rules.
So here goes. I shall try to conjure up an image of it for you:
During the term, we specialised in the three different forms of the sport – 15 then 10 then 6 a-side.
A pitch – called a ‘Canvas’, is approximately 80 metres long and 15 metres wide and is flanked on either side by two and a half metre high netting designed to keep the ball in play. A metre inside the netting, and running parallel to it, is a one-metre tug of war rope running taut at waist height for the length of the pitch – with its tension maintained by sturdy posts at intervals. I remember well, one student in my year (a huge rower) accidentally kicking one of the posts instead of the ball and breaking his leg on impact. We often came off the pitch with rope burns – a sign of fierce rucking over the ropes.
The pitches were level with a river and a flood plain and we often played on a surface which lacked grass and was uneven, muddy and with large pools of standing water – and sometimes partially flooded. I remember one teammate kicking the ball in a huge pool of water with all his power and not moving it an inch. He was promptly mown over by the opposing and advancing team, and left horizontal and completely saturated.
At the school, we had to learn a medieval slang language called ‘Notions’. Here at Shawnigan, we expect new students to learn the words of your respective house hymn. At my school, we were tested on our extensive vocab – my bicycle was a ‘Bogle’; prep was ‘toytime’; our sport tops were called ‘zephyrs’; to be ‘rusticated’ was to be suspended (and no I wasn’t!); and to be ‘firked’ was to be expelled. I was often called ‘spree’ for being a very cheeky grade 8.
Of course, the sport we all played had its own associated language – the scrum was called a ‘hot’, the scrum halves were ‘hot-watches’ and the full backs – my position – were ‘kicks’. The aim of the game was to kick the soccer ball into ‘worms’, the area behind the back line of the opposition. Occasionally, if a player caught the ball without it bouncing, he could then kick it back to gain territory – this type of return (much like a punt as a goalkeeper does in soccer) was called a ‘bust’.
The hooker’s position was called ‘OP’. I never knew what it officially stood for but imagined it stood for ‘‘orrible position’ given you were often scrummaging over what seemed like a lake.
We played it fanatically. It was deeply tribal as Houses played each other throughout the term – and we loved it.
Friendships were forged, historical rivalries continued – and we became increasingly fit as we moved to six-a-side mode in the second half of term.
It never struck me (nor any of my friends) that no one else played it beyond the school. Every so often, an apocryphal rumour would circulate that there was still a small colonial outpost of a village in South Africa, lost in time, where it was still played – and that a tour might be put together.
When out dog walking here at Shawnigan, I sometimes eye the uneven piece of grass by the observatory and think it would make an excellent place for a pitch.
Of course, university came as a shock. My greatest love was for cricket and I had always enjoyed the ‘minor’ game at school of field hockey but I had absolutely no experience of rugby.
As an undergraduate, I loved watching my friends play rugby and would spend hours throwing and kicking a ball around on the touch line but lacked the courage to step forward for this new sport, new challenge.
I knew I could run, catch, pass, kick, but was utterly untrained, clueless and a complete liability.
However, as a post-graduate, I ended up in a college (at a different university) which happened to be one of the two main feeder colleges for the Varsity rugby team. Postgraduate students from all over the world would come to win a ‘blue’ by playing in a historic match between two universities.
The inter-college competition was fiercely contested. My friends in my college persuaded me that I had to swap my cricket whites for rugby cleats.
Of course, I wasn’t destined to play full back as I hoped (he was the captain of the All Blacks U21 team with his brother as number 8 for the All Blacks). I found myself, given my height for the line-outs, unsurprisingly thrust into life in the second row.
My friends still tease me about my first game against Christ’s College. I decided that I vainly needed to tape up my head and specifically my ears (given the prevalence of cauliflower ears in the rest of our scrum). Inexperienced, I managed to strap the tape too low and had limited vision for the match.
My partner in the second row was a 50 year old former British Lions rugby player and then the current indoor rowing world record holder – back in 1998, he could do 2000 metres in six minutes and seven seconds. His name was Andy Ripley.
I remember very well a game against St John’s College on a very wet and slippery pitch. He decided we needed a second row warm-up in the form of a one-on-one scrum. From the moment we scrummed down, I remember being propelled backwards at top speed and was saved from complete humiliation by the base of a giant oak tree.
Our team was full of talented rugby players – from Wales to the Southern Hemisphere – and then me. My job was simply to catch the ball in the line-out, push in the scrum and ensure at all costs, that I gave the ball immediately to someone much more experienced and talented in the team. It helped that one of our players was a future All Black centre and Super 12 champion with the Canterbury Crusaders. He was simply unstoppable.
I loved every minute of it – and it gave me a love of the game and some unforgettable memories and friendships. If you ever visit my study in my house, you will find a couple of framed photos of that team. I was proud to be one of them.
Some of you might have noticed that I always wear a certain tie every Thursday (and I am sporting it today) – it is a long-standing tradition of the Owls, the sports club of my college. Every time, I put on my sports tie, my colours, each week, it connects me to that world, those friendships forged through sport.
In a few minutes, we shall present Shawnigan colours to those who have been deemed by their coaches to be deserving of this honour. This morning is about recognising the commitment and attitude of our students who have won their colours in Field Hockey, Volleyball, Cross Country, Soccer, the Outdoors program, Dance and Swimming.
I hope that you wear the pin or tie with pride and, in the decades ahead, your colours (in a drawer or on a shelf somewhere) connect you back to friendships forged through sport and the team dynamic.
I have so enjoyed watching from the sidelines the progress teams have made through the course of the term, the acts of sportsmanship that defines individuals and teams at Shawnigan, and the dedication of your coaches. I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to show your appreciation to your Shawnigan coaches – Mrs Conroy promised me she would try to watch this live in Zimbabwe – yesterday they had no electricity for fifteen hours, so fingers crossed.
Mr Connolly gave me an essay recently about CW Lonsdale that he wrote for our centennial celebrations. In it, he recounts the favourite memory of Shawnigan’s Pat Gaffney, class of 1953:
“. . . in my third year—I had made the 2nd XV, and we were playing University School. We were within three points. I was playing fullback. The University School wing broke free on the outside, and I was the last one to have a crack at him. I knocked him out of bounds with probably the hardest tackle of my rugby career. And Renny Edgett, who was a member of the 1st XV and in my house, ran down the sideline shouting, “Way to go, Gaffney!” I had always felt inferior to Edgett, but that was the turning point. I had finally proved myself. We went on to win that game – the 2nd XV beat University School for the first time in years. And that tackle was the turning point for me. I will never forget Edgett running along the sideline, shouting, “Way to go, Gaffney!”
As Headmaster, I like to think that the description captures the essence of sport at whatever level and whatever sport (in my case, a sport that no other school in the world plays): the unique memories, the friendships, the laughter, the hope, the pride, and – in the spirit of Gaffney and Edgett – the ‘turning points’ it generates for us all.
I hope that all of you here today, students and staff, can take a moment to reflect on the term gone by and the impact Shawnigan sport has made on your life and the lives of others.
Palmam Qui Meruit Ferat
Richard D A Lamont
Headmaster
3rd December 2019
We acknowledge with respect the Coast Salish Peoples on whose traditional lands and waterways we live, learn and play. We are grateful for the opportunity to share in this beautiful region, and we aspire to healthy and respectful relationships with those who have lived on and cared for these lands for millennia.
Shawnigan Lake School is an independent co-educational boarding school for ages 13 –18 on Canada’s beautiful Pacific Coast. Our diverse, interdisciplinary and innovative programming helps shape the next generation of global leaders.
