The way the world is going one sometimes wonders how sport is going to survive.
Soon we will witness mixed teams across the board playing sport where the result has been predetermined, so that no one is upset that they lost. Both teams will be given a trophy to take home, because there can be no losers, simply by participating they are all winners!
Sport was always used as an analogy for life. It was competitive. Invariably the best won, whether they were the ones who had the most talent and skill, or whether they were the best prepared for that particular match, or they were the best on the day. It had nothing to do with sex, age, race, or religion, you crossed that line you were all equal and your declared yourself ready to compete. The winners were the one’s rewarded for being the best at that point in time. Sometimes, as in life there would be an incident which would turn a game and maybe the best team didn’t win, it wasn’t fair, but there are times when life isn’t fair. The level of a person is often best reflected in these times, and how they respond to adversity.
There are times today where one questions the world we live in, and more importantly the sporting world where for some reason rather than standing firm in relation to the principles of competition the various bodies have opted to win favour. Not always favour with the majority, but often simply with those shouting the loudest.
The announcement that the upcoming Rugby Union test series between Australia and England will no longer be played for the Cook Cup is just another case in point. England and Australia have played for this trophy for the past 25 years but now that history has been thrown in the bin.
There is no doubt that Captain James Cook, and Englishman who is credited as achieving the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia, is today a divisive figure, just as many historical figures from three centuries or more ago are bound to be. They were very different times.
When the trophy was named after Cook rugby had just turned professional, and seven years earlier Australia had celebrated its Bicentennial, of which Captain James Cook’s memory was a key part, so it made sense. Especially as there was no record of any player having played for both nations at international level. Outside of rugby there may have been other options but at that time this was believed to make sense.
In 2001 when the British and Irish Lions headed to Australia the Tom Richards Cup was commissioned in memory of the only man to have played for Australia and the British and Irish Lions.
Now in 2022 we live in very strange times, dangerous times where centuries of history are simply being discarded on the whim of a few people.
The Cook trophy will be no more, but has yet another great opportunity not been missed?
Could the trophy not have been used to educate people about Captain James Cook, the good he did as a cartographer and how that work changed the world in his day? Could not the side of him that is now seen as being wrong also be covered and explained in the context of his times? Imagine if the victors, England Rugby or Rugby Australia, as both are known today, took the trophy around their country to schools and junior rugby clubs and shared that history and the history of the matches that have been played for the trophy, how much that could benefit society rather than simply changing the name?
The new name has baffled many, the Ella- Mobbs Trophy. While there can be no disputing the validity of both former players names being put forward, or the fact that both are thoroughly deserving in being afforded such an honour, having it named after two players whose careers were decades apart is hard to fathom. Edgar Mobbs made seven appearances for England between 1909 and 1910. He made his debut aged 27.
Edgar Mobbs was clearly a leader of men. After initially being turned down for being too old to join the army in World War I, Mobbs raised his own “sportsman’s” company of 250 sportsmen, – they were affectionately known as “Mobbs’ Own” – for the Northamptonshire Regiment. He rose to command his battalion with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Mobbs was killed in action, on 31 July 1917, at Zillebeke, Belgium. It was during the Third Battle of Ypres, that Mobbs life was ended while attacking a machine gun post. His body has never been found, so his name is on the Menin Gate as his memorial. At his old school Bedford Modern, a house is named after him,
In 1921 the first Mobbs’ Memorial Match was held. This was played between the East Midlands RFU and the Barbarians at Franklin’s Gardens. In 2008 and 2009 the Barbarians played Bedford Blues in the Mobbs Memorial Match at Goldington Road. The final Mobbs Match to feature the Barbarians took place in April 2011 against Bedford. The fixture continues to be played with the Army Rugby Union facing Bedford and Northampton Saints in alternate years and the game helps to raise money for youth rugby in the area. There is also a bust of Mobbs at Northampton.
The first meeting between England and Australia in a Test match was in 1909 in London, which gives some credence as to why Mobbs name has been put forward.
Mark Ella’s international career spanned from 1980-1984, 70 years after Mobbs. Ella was a sublime player to watch. He would become the first indigenous Australian to captain the Wallabies; Arthur Beetson was the first Aboriginal to captain an Australian sporting team in Rugby League in 1973. Ella would also be the first and only player to score a try in every match of a Grand Slam tour of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
There can be no doubt that Rugby Australia are trying to right a wrong to the Aboriginal people having been party to the naming of the original trophy after Captain James Cook. For to the Aboriginal people Cook’s landing in Australia is symbolic. It was a warning that the end of their cultural dominion over their lands was imminent. Just 18 years later came the landing of the First Fleet and Aboriginal life would never be the same.
There can be absolutely no doubt that both former players are worthy of having the trophy named after them, but the pairing seems odd. In other sports we have seen trophies named after players that went head-to-head against each other like the Border-Gavaskar Trophy between Australia and India in Cricket and also the regrettable decision to can the Wisden Trophy and rename it the Botham- Richards Trophy. (If You Know Your History…)
If you are going to name a trophy after these two leaders for two very different eras then it is vital that the two sporting bodies go out of their way to promote their stories and what they stood for as men away from the rugby field.
Which comes back to the Cook Trophy could this not have been used to educate?
One does wonder where this will all end.
Will the Bledisloe Cup be the next to be renamed? After all the man after whom it is named had no real interest in the sport.
Charles Bathurst, 1st Viscount Bledisloe was the Governor-General of New Zealand from 1930 to 1935. He was a barrister and conveyancer. In 1910 he entered parliament representing the Conservative Party as MP for the South or Wilton division of Wiltshire. He served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food and during World War I ensured that Britain still had sugar.
The first Bledisloe Cup named after him in New Zealand, was for the best exhibit of New Zealand apples at the Imperial Fruit Show. Today it is the Bledisloe Cup for Horticulture.
Despite attending Eton College and University College, Oxford, Lord Bledisloe was not an athlete and the donation of the Bledisloe Cup for Rugby was more done for publicity than for Rugby. So much so that when it was first contested in Auckland in 1931 – some dispute this date – he was not even at the game to present the trophy! He was at an event at the other end of North Island. Surely it is unthinkable that a trophy be named after someone who didn’t like or even watch the sport?
Then there is the Calcutta Cup contested between England and Scotland. When the Calcutta Football club was disbanded in 1878 the club’s remaining rupees (270) were melted down and the Calcutta Cup was created. They presented it to the RFU of which the club had been a member since 1874. The trophy was supposed to be Rugby’s equivalent of the FA Cup, but in those amateur days the powers that be did not want to promote such competitiveness.
It was decided that it would be contested when Scotland played England once a year, and the first Calcutta Cup match was played at Raeburn Place, Edinburgh, on 10 March 1879. It ended in a draw.
This trophy was born out of the Colonial era. An era that is now on nose for many, as they look back at what it represented, and the ways in which the Colonial powers behaved. So will this too in time see pressure brought to bear that it can no longer be called the Calcutta Cup, especially as Calcutta the name no longer exists?
Rather than throwing history away why not embrace it and use it as an educational tool? Use it to mend broken relationships and try and heal. The current policy is simply causing more ill feeling as it is politically motivated rather than coming from the heart. Sport is all about heart. You play with it, you put it on the line, but most important of all when administering it, your decisions must come from it.
