SPECTATOR SPORT
Ack-ack stopped play
Frank Keating
THE FRENCH have been fast to suggest it might be in bad taste to continue with the Five-Nations rugby championship if the guns start sounding in the Gulf, and fair enough, I suppose, for two world wars were played on their home pitch, which obviously disrupted their sporting prog- ramme more than somewhat. While across the Channel — especially between 1939-45 — the Brits played on with gay abandon.
The contemporary reports did carry a splutter of indignation when the Dunkirk evacuation coincided with the first wartime Cup final at Wembley (Blackburn Rovers 0, West Ham 1) on 8 June 1940 and seamen were said to be listening to the BBC wireless broadcast of the match at the same time as they were fishing bodies out of the sea.
But Churchill, though no team-game ball-player himself unless you count polo, insisted the Home Front would be happier for 'business as usual', saying sport had 'premier place as first of all the British popular amusements'. He instructed the Board of Trade to provide free clothing coupons for sporting equipment, and to continue manufacturing footballs — even after the fall of Malaya and the resulting shortage of rubber. He also had the Home Office encourage the Football Association to reorganise the professional game on a regional basis, on the understanding that matches would not interfere with produc- tion or recruitment, and that teams would have to travel no more than 50 miles.
Churchill obviously twigged how sport also rallied the troops abroad. Well, not everything could be wrong with the world, could it, if Villa were beating Wolves back in Blighty last Saturday? (Think how the Welsh Guards in the Gulf this January Saturday 1991 will be cheered if Wales beat England once again at the Arms Park). One of the most touching communications of the last war was received by Reuters' foreign desk, an urgent Morse code cable in 1942 from the beleagured island of Malta: 'Please repeat Saturday's football results. Heavy bombing interfered with reception.'
Horse-racing continued: a letter to the Times in May 1941 complained how Derby Day 'must have consumed thousands of gallons of petrol when hundreds of motor omnibuses and cars converged on New- market from a wide area'. The Min. of Ag.
encouraged hunting on the grounds that every hen the fox did not get was one more for the pot, the same theory that allowed the pheasant shooting season to run well past 1 February each year of the war.
The Oval became a barbed-wire clearing-house for enemy PoWs, but Lord's continued merrily at cricket on the understanding, as its eminence Pelham Warner declared, that 'if Herr Goebbels could broadcast to the world that war had caused cricket at Lord's to cease it would be an invaluable propaganda triumph for Germany'. So Wisden reported the war as ever: on 7 August 1940, Middlesex XI v Lord's XI 'reduced to hopeless chaos when air-raid warning obliged cricketers to take cover'. Three weeks later, British Empire XI v Buccaneers, a draw, 'with Buccaneers going for victory, match called off owing to Battle of Britain'.
Dear, deadpan Wisden didn't bat an eye right through to 1944 — 8 July, 'West of England XI were originally matched against AA Command, but owing to gun- ners being engaged with flying bombs, opposition was changed to "a Lord's XI".' A fortnight cater, July 20, Lord's XI v Canada: 'Americans were to have appeared, but their team, chosen entirely from bomber crews, were suddenly en- gaged in the initial stages of the liberation of Europe.'
No wonder the French still think we're barmy.
Previous page
