SPECTATOR SPORT
Cornish pride
Frank Keating
SOD the overseas tourists, it is the English provinces that have been laying siege to London. Even today's raucous invasion of tens of thousands of Lancastrians for the Rugby League cup final will be nothing compared to last weekend when 30,000 blistered nutters in various states of un- dress, duress, and fancy-dress came down for the London Marathon; another 80,000 from Manchester and Sheffield assembled at Wembley for the football and — most remarkable of all — 40,000 from Cornwall alone denuded the Duchy for Twick- enham's rugby union county final.
The march on London by Bishop Tre- lawney's men in 1688 could have had nothing on Saturday morning's cavalcade of black and gold up the M3 and M4. By all accounts, 189 coaches crossed the Tamar, plus five bulging, buffet-bar beery Britrail specials. The team did its stuff, too, beating Yorkshire in extra-time, not so much through any technical or tactical superiority (far from it), but by a native fervour nourished by an immense collec- tive will from the throng.
In the grandstand, eyes rheumily glint- ing, was Bill Osborne. He is 103. It was romantically eerie to think that he first kicked and caught a rugger ball in the 19th century. Cornwall last won a county cham- pionship final 83 years ago, in 1908. Bill Osborne was there. The winning try that day — against Durham at Redruth — was scored by Bert Solomon, a Treleigh Ran- ger who was three years older than Bill and who remains the finest player the hale old centenarian ever saw.
After the final all the London pressmen came back to report on the brilliance of Solomon at centre-threequarter. For 18 months they insisted Solomon should be picked for England. The selectors grudg- ingly gave in for the match against Wales in 1910, the first to be played at the newly built Twickenham stadium. Bill was in the handful who came on the Penzance milk- train with Bert, whom they called `Barney'. England's captain, and Bert's fly-half, was the crisp barrister, Adrian Stoop Rugby, Oxford, and Harlequins, the triply perfect pedigree. He greeted Bert in the dressing-room: 'I say, old man, how do you like your passes, eh?' Said Bert, to sniggers from the rest of the England side, 'kiss thraw ball ort an' orl catch 'un, boy'. Inside a minute, that's just what happened. Eng- land heel, Gent to Stoop to Solomon . . . the Welsh captain, Trew, is flamboyantly dummied with a Redruth shimmy . . an overlap, to Birkett, to Chapman, who goes in at the corner. Twenty minutes later, a loose ball, Gent to Stoop — to Solomon. He is through Trew again, like a knife, then 40 yards at full lick, an outrageous dummy to fool Bancroft, and Bert scores at the posts. In the second-half, a couple more mesmerising breaks, some lassoo-ing tackles, and the clearance kicks of a Camborne mineshaft mule kept all Twick- ers' tickers pumping. As they came off, victorious, Stoop asked Solomon, 'I say, old boy, where were you at school?' Embarrassed, Bert lied for the only time in his life, turning Trewirgie Boys' Elementary School into Trewirgie College. He didn't bother to bath, caught the bus back — and never so much as answered another postcard pleading with him to play for England again. Bert Solomon died in 1961. But he would have been looking down with relish on Saturday. Bill Osborne said he was sure of that.
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