Fourteen v. Fifteen
By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P.
CAMBRIDGE, you will know, won the _Varsity Rugger Match by six points (one try, one penalty goal) to five points lone goal). Oxford should have won. Cambridge deserved to. The first half was the dullest I have ever seen in a Varsity Match. Contrary to expectation, Oxford repeatedly got the ball in the scrums and, equally contrary to expectation, could do nothing with it when they got it. So, though play was almost entirely in the Cambridge half, nothing much happened. Indeed a black dog who had frisked for some minutes on the referee's blind side, soon became so bored that he trotted away to the left of the Oxford goal line and there, with his back to the game, stared bleakly at the crowd, wondering no doubt why on earth people wanted to stand about on a cold day like this.
The surroundings matched the play. Fog and frost had disappeared overnight, but had left drabness behind them. There was no colour in the crowd, except for a uniform brown- ness. The slight mist was brown. Even Twickenham's turf, usually so green, seemed brown from the remains of the straw which had protected the ground for some days and which was now stacked along the sidelines.
After a time, a man came to haul the dog away. This, as always, proved more difficult than the man seemed to expect. Man and dog had quite a game to themselves in the Oxford twenty-five, while the referee busied himself with whatever was going on in the Cambridge twenty-five. As it happened, just as the dog called it a day, Oxford scored. Spence, their scrum- half, went round the blind side and passed to Pollard, who scored in the corner. In the angle between the touch-line and the twenty-five, Robinson carefully placed the ball, then paced several steps backwards to the edge of the straw. Then he wiped the mud from the toe of his boot and, as Cambridge forwards thundered down on him, took a few leisurely strides and kicked a precise, lovely goal.
That was after sixteen minutes. Nothing else happened in the first half, except that Massey, who had already been off the field for some minutes, had to leave it for good with a cracked rib a few minutes before half-time. It looked odds-on a poor game and an Oxford victory for the fifth time in succession—which would have been a record. But in the Varsity Match there is no such thing as odds-on. Three minutes after half time Cambridge were given a penalty, some yards the wrong side of the Oxford twenty-five and half way to the touch-line. Davies, their tall full back, placed the ball carefully, walked back some yards, then turned, drew himself to his full height and stared at the Oxford goal-posts. Then, almost as an afterthought, he kicked the ball between them. From that moment, players and crowd burst into flame.
Cambridge's fourteen men began to knock Oxford all over Oxford's part of the field. Their seven forwards out-shoved Oxford's eight and usually got the ball, whereat the Cambridge three-quarters, especially well served by Pearson, the scrum- half, played as though they had never been called a satisfactory college line in a lean year. When, for a change, Oxford got the ball, they also got Cambridge forwards, such as Beer and Wheeler, which was not much help. Within ten minutes, Cambridge went ahead with a try which came all along the line and ended with Jones smacking the ball down in the corner. The kick failed, so that was 6-5 to Cambridge; and 6-5 to Cambridge it remained until the end.
But what an end ! Oxford had had the better of a bad first half. Then for twenty minutes in the second half they had been all but swamped. For the last twenty minutes, they very nearly came into their- own. Their forwards began a glorious rush. They were stopped illegally inside the Cambridge twenty-five. Robinson, who never misses these things, took the resultant penalty—and missed. Back came Oxford, and Jenkin took a beautiful drop at goal. He just missed. Johnstone, the Springbok international, broke away with his wing man beside him. Perhaps the wing man was covered. Anyway, when a try seemed probable, Johnstone kicked. His kick reached touch just short of the corner flag.- Thereafter there were lineouts on the line, scrums on the line, everything on the line, but nothing over it, except once when the Cam- bridge full back was caught there in possession and once when the Oxford eight shoved their opponents a full five yards. As the scrum collapsed on the ball, Spence, the Oxford captain, jumped in the air. Here at last was• the try ! But the referee ordered another five-yard scrum. • Under this pounding Cambridge never lost their heads nor spared their energy.. Time after time, Morgan beat off the pressure with stabbing kicks to touch. Every player in the team became a flying man-trap, clutching at any Oxford man who had the ball and, occasionally, at some who hadn't; and at thirty-nine minutes past three, this Tuesday afternoon, they heard a sound they will remember all their lives.
This Cambridge victory will be popular with some people for the wrong reasons. Early in the season the Press began shouting about the number of South Africans in the Oxford side, just as at one time it shouted about the number of Scotsmen in it or more recently about the number of Welshmen in the Cambridge side. The suggestion this year has been that whereas Oxford were a lot of foreigners, Cambridge represented all that was best and brighteSt in Britain. There- fore a Cambridge win was a victory for Britain. In fact, if Cambridge can be presumed a University, and if the word University means what I think it does,* race, colour or creed did not enter into the matter. All that did enter in was that Cambridge won. On general principles, I call this a bad thing.
There were better reasons for being pleased about the result. Some people like to back a winning side, and for that reason have jumped on the waggon of Oxford's post-war success. But others—and in Rugby football they are probably the majority—want to see the persistent loser suddenly transformed into the victor. For such as these Cambridge's win was the end of a fairy tale.
Where in all this did I stand ? I regret to say I didn't. As a rule I'm as steady as a rock. Oxford, Yorkshire, Hudders- field Town—they've got to win, or else. Imagine then my surprise when at the final whistle of this game I found myself smiling. I had, of course, been prodding Oxford with Well- aimed advice during those desperate, thunderous closing minutes of the game. But when it was all over, -I was quite pleased that Cambridge had scraped home. It must have been the fourteen against fifteen that did it. I must be getting soft.
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