SPECTATOR SPORT
Keepers of the flame
Frank Keating
DALLIERS around that heroic shrine, the always scrupulously tended 'Double Inter- national Memorial Gardens', keenly await the selection of the New Zealand rugby XV to play Scotland in Edinburgh next week. Twenty-year-old Jeff Wilson played out the antipodean summer last March at Hamil- ton by clouting the Australian cricketers for 44 in 28 balls to square up the one-day series. He has yet to play in a cricket Test match, of course.
Should he be capped at both games, Smith would apparently be the seventh All Black 'double'. Soccer's list of cricketers — it finished with Arthur Milton in the 1950s and can never possibly be reopened — was always more businesslike and no-messing professional. Cricket's list of rugby caps is far more easy-come and dilettante.
Sammy Woods was one early bold colo- nial who arrived from New South Wales and in no time was playing cricket and rugby for England. There was R.O. Schwarz who did it 'the other way'. An Old Pauline and Cambridge blue, he was Eng- land's fly-half for a season at the exact turn of the century only to turn up in sport's genuine gold-leaf record book seven years later as one of South Africa's mesmerising Purveyors of googlies on their 1907 tour to England, in which he took 143 wickets at a ludicrous 11 apiece. ('RO' went right through the Great War, and, frequently `mentioned' for gallantry at the front, he won the Military Cross; he died seven days after the Armistice — of influenza.) A.E. Stoddart, tragic hero, played both games for England. Maurice Turnbull won one rugby cap for Wales and nine for Eng- land at cricket. A Rhodes Scholarship seemed to oil the sporting ways as well. Clive van Ryneveld played his rugby for England and his cricket for South Africa — and nobody in those heady and grainy old days of the certitude and the freemasonry of sport felt it necessary to take up any cud- gels. `Tuppy' Owen-Smith did it the same way as van Ryneveld. 'As a batsman,' wrote Pelham Warner, 'while no one would dream of calling Owen-Smith "sound", he had an eye like a hawk, hit a half-volley an awful long way, and could cut and hook.' He was full-back for England for four sea- sons, ending as captain and 'chaired' from Twickenham after England's championship of 1937.
The year before, the old stadium had seen Obolenslcy's Match when the tries by the Russian prince had electrified the leg- end and done for the All Blacks. Playing for New Zealand that day at fly-half — OK, OK, 'first five-eighth' — was 'Snowy' Tindill. It was to be his only black cap. But it ensured him the all-time laurels, for in 29 Test matches as wicket-keeper (35 catches, 18 stumpings) he had already brought home the summer's bacon.
Another one-cap wonder to join the club was the sublime New Zealand left-hander Martin Donnelly (one game at rugby for England — he was up at Oxford — in 1947). England's last, of course, was Mike — M.J.K. — Smith, England's new cricket tour manager and captain countless times in the 1960s. He played once for England at rugby in 1956. It was a none too happy occasion, but he had become an immortal.
Keeper of this particular flame has to be Dr Kevin O'Flanagan. One Saturday in 1946, he played a rousing game of rugger for Ireland against France. The following Saturday he was again wearing the green shirt and dancing down the wing in the international against Scotland — this time at soccer.
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