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January
3rd 1925 Twickenham. In a highly anticipated match
England
were to face the touring All Blacks on a sunny if blustery afternoon. Some
sixty thousand spectators including the Edward the Prince of Wales and Stanley
Baldwin the Prime Minister had crammed into Twickenham stadium for what was
hoped to be the showpiece of the
New Zealand
tour. There was much to play for. The only time that the two sides had met
previously in 1905 the All Blacks had been easy victors by fifteen points to
nil. Recently England had been on a run of good form, having been unbeaten for
the previous two seasons and achieving back to back ‘grand slams’, a rare
achievement in itself. Although the English trials had not gone as well as may
have been hoped they retained enough residual strength, particularly in their
pack, to have a real hope of taking the game. For the All Blacks there was also
much to be gained by victory. Vilified as an almost embarrassingly weak squad
before they left
New Zealand
they were so far unbeaten in twenty seven games and had already bested
Ireland
and
Wales
. It was a record that they would guard jealously at this late stage of their
tour.
The
Twickenham atmosphere was charged. The crown was electrified with the players,
and particularly the opposing packs, hyped up almost to a frenzy. That the
referee Albert Freethy was going to have his hands full soon became clear. From
the kick off the two sets of forwards showed that no quarter could be expected
in this game, their play being robust to say the least. Lest the game should
descend into little more than an open brawl Freethy issued three general
warnings within the first few minutes of the start. Finally with just seven
minutes on the clock he ordered the New Zealand Forward Cyril Brownlie from the
pitch. It was testament to the All Blacks skill and determination that despite
the disadvantage that this left them with for the majority of the match they
still managed to dig deep and win the contest by seventeen points to eleven.
Here the matter should have rested, but it did not.
Perhaps
the controversy that subsequently raged was because this was a first. No player
had ever been sent off in an international match before. There is little doubt
that
New Zealand
would have preferred that such an ignominious historical fact would belong to
any team rather than their own. Within hours of the match Freethy would feel it
necessary to issue a statement justifying his decision, which was duly
reproduced in the Times of London the following Monday: “In some loose play the ball had been sent away and two or three
England forwards were lying on the ground. C. Brownlie was a few feet away from
them, and as he came back he deliberately kicked on the leg an
England
forward lying face downward on the ground. I had taken my eye off the ball for
a moment, and therefore saw exactly what happened. Previous to this I had warned
each side generally three times, and therefore I had no option but to send
Brownlie off the field. I much regretted having to do this, but in the
circumstances I had no alternative but to take this drastic action. ”
Freethy was at this time a highly respected Welsh referee. From Neath he had
refereed the Olympic Final in 1924 and also officiated over every
France
versus
England
match played in
Paris
between the wars. A teacher by profession he was regarded as firm but fair.
The
battle lines were swiftly drawn in the press. The Times itself stated that “...
if Brownlie paid the penalty for ignoring the referee’s warnings to both sides
he had only himself to blame.” and further “This was an unprecedented indignity in the match, and perhaps the
sooner it is forgotten, and the longer merely its meaning is remembered the
better it will be for the game.” Unsurprisingly this was not a view shared
by the
New Zealand
team or press. In the Evening Post on January 5th 1925 the All
Blacks team manager SS Dean was quoted as saying “the referee made a mistake... It is felt that a grave injustice has
been done to Brownlie and the unfortunate occurrence has cast a gloom over the
whole party”, the article later adding that the event “could not help the spirit of Imperialism.”
Claim
and counter claim abounded. The New Zealand players were incensed that the
England Captain had apparently ignored the appeal “well it is up to you”
from his All Black counterpart Jock Richardson, alluding to the New Zealand
sometime practise of the opposing Captain interceding on the behalf of the
dismissed player to allow his return. In the press Wavell Wakefield would
counter this by stating that he had not heard Richardson’s plea, nor seen the
incident itself further commenting that given the state of play it could just
have easily have been an Englishman who infringed next and was sent off. In his
book ‘Rugger’ of 1927 he would further add that any such custom was unheard
of in Britain and in any case “Such
action clearly undermines the authority of the referee, and it is a captain’s
business to support a referee’s decision at all cost, whether he agrees with
that decision or not... it is one of the basic rules of Rugby that a referee’s
decision is unalterable.” This may all have been true, but at the same
time it would be naive to think that
Wakefield
was unaware of the potential advantage that
England
would gain facing the All Blacks a man down for seventy minutes of a match.
It
also remained a sore point that the English player who had allegedly been
stamped remained unnamed. Reg Edwards an English prop went so far as to state on
record that he had not been the player to feel the force of Brownlie’s boot,
whilst the England back Leonard Corbett could say little more than his Captain
in as much as that he had not seen the incident and some years later that he had
never made any attempt “to establish the
facts which caused the regrettable incident and have always studiously avoided
being drawn into the numerous controversies that arose out of it.” Corbett
was also generous in his praise of the referee himself agreeing with the
commonly held view that “Mr Freethy was
the ablest, fairest and firmest referee it was ever my experience to play under
and. unfortunate and regrettable though this incident undoubtedly was, I have no
reason to suppose that his judgement was at fault or that his actions were
unjustified.” He also felt that the sending off had the desired effect as
it was to “steady the more exuberant and
excitable players on both sides.”
The
New Zealand
press were not so forgiving. An article in the Evening Post on March 7th
1925 related how the sending off actually resulted from a line out and an
altercation between Edwards and Brownlie which led to them both being personally
warned and Freethy “in a state of rage
and was determined that Cyril Brownlie should go off.” Edwards, who was
reported to the Rugby Football Union by Freethy for his own actions in the
match, admitted the incident, although stated that this was three or four
minutes before the sending off and denied that he was personally warned.
Conversely another article in the Evening Post that had been published on
February 17th complained that Brownlie was merely retaliating for
dirty play by English players that had preceded the event and that HAD he been personally warned then in all probability the
outcome would have been different.
In
all it was a morass. Taking Freethy’s statement at face value it seems almost
inevitable that someone would be asked to leave the pitch. There may well have
been other players who could, perhaps even should, have been excluded.
Freethy’s view of Brownlie may have been clouded by the lineout incident a few
minutes before, but aggressor or not, retaliation or not Brownlie did something
that made Freethy decide that enough was enough. The event did not seem to
unduly effect his playing career within New Zealand itself, and indeed just a
couple of weeks later he took the field to play France in the final test of
their tour. If nothing else Freethy’s decision did seem to have the desired
effect as the game settled into something more akin to rugby than a bar room
brawl. New Zealand would go on to remain unbeaten and claim the title of ‘The
Invincibles’, a genuinely historic feat, albeit one that will always be tinged
by the fact that a member of their party was also the first to be sent off the
international field of play.
Sources
‘Fifty
Years of the All Blacks’, Wooler W & Owen D, Phoenix House Ltd, 1954
‘Rugger’,
Wakefield WW & Marshall HP, Longmans, Green & Co, 1927
The
Times Online Digital Archive
Papers
Past at the National Library of
New Zealand
Statsguru
at scrum.com
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The
Rugby History Society