Remembering the fallen
At Allianz Stadium the Ella Mobbs cup was presented to the winning team for a home Test for the very first time on Saturday 9 November.
Introduced in 2022, ahead of England’s three-Test tour to Australia, the Ella Mobbs Cup is named after indigenous Australian 25-cap Wallabies legend Mark Ella and English war hero Edgar Mobbs, who played seven Tests for England before being killed on the western front during the First World War.
Edgar Mobbs’ great-great-great-great nephew, six-year-old Ollie Ewens, was an England mascot against Australia. And, on this Remembrance weekend, we remember Lieutenant Colonel Mobbs who died at Passchendaele on 31st July 1917; the 27 World War I England internationals and 15 World War II internationals and club players who never came home; and all who have lost their lives in both world wars and conflicts around the globe.
England captain Edgar Mobbs played for Olney Rugby Club and in 1905-6 made his debut for Northampton Saints, later becoming club captain. In 1908 he captained the combined Midlands and East Midlands Counties against Australia, setting up two tries in the touring Wallabies’ only defeat against an English side. He played against the Wallabies at Twickenham, scoring a try on his debut.
Throughout the 1909 season he scored against Ireland and Scotland and in 1910 captained England against France, winning a first outright Championship since 1892. Having played for the Barbarians, he hung up his boots in 1913, having captained Northampton for six years and scored 179 tries.
After the outbreak of World War One, he formed the ‘Sportsman’s Battalion’ leading 264 men, of whom only 85 survived the war. Mobbs was among the fallen, gunned down leading an assault on a machine gun post during the Third Battle of Ypres. His body was never found, but his legacy lives on.
In 1921, thousands were at the unveiling of the Mobbs Memorial in Northampton’s Market Square. That year also saw the first Mobbs Memorial Match between the East Midlands (more recently Bedford) and the Barbarians, played ever since.
He is remembered on the Menin Gate and on memorials at Olney, Northampton and Franklin’s Gardens, with a road called Edgar Mobbs Way in Northampton.
Anzac Day is the national remembrance day in Australia and New Zealand, coinciding with the start of the Gallipoli Campaign on the 25th April 1915. Allied Forces were attempting to take control of the Dardanelles Strait, led by the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, which included the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps alongside British, French, Indian and Canadian contingents.
On the first day of the landings, Australia lost two international players. Teddy Larkin represented Australia against New Zealand in the first edition of what would become known as the Bledisloe Cup. He was elected to the NSW state parliament as Labor MP for Willoughby in 1913 but enlisted as a private in the 1st Australian Imperial Force.
Blair Swannell, a back-row forward with Northampton, played for the touring side that would become known as the British and Irish Lions in 1899 and 1904.
His try in 1904 helped defeat the Wallabies and when the tourists went home, he opted to stay. The following year he toured New Zealand with the Australia squad. In 1914, he enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force.
Both he and Larkin were among the first battalions to land at Anzac Cove. They came under heavy fire and Larkin was with Australians who advanced so quickly that they were cut off from their support. He was wounded and left behind, his bayoneted body found a month later. Swannell, was shot in the head. By the time of the Armistice in November 1918, they had been joined by a further eight Wallabies.
Lost saving others at sea
Among the 15 England players who died in World War II was England and Gloucester wing Kit Tanner who died on 22nd May 1941, having rescued 30 people from the wreckage of HMS Fiji.
Christopher Tanner delighted Gloucester fans and won a first cap for England against Scotland in 1930, and four more in 1932 against Ireland, Wales, South Africa and Scotland, scoring against the Scots. He was one of three clergymen playing for Gloucester in the 1930s. The curate at St Mary de Lode church, he is commemorated there.
Kit volunteered as a naval chaplain, was posted to the cruiser HMS Fiji, joining the Mediterranean Fleet and tasked with preventing a German seaborne landing on Crete.
They came under heavy attack from the Luftwaffe. When the order to abandon ship was given, Kit supervised the removal of all 60 wounded men from the sick bay, then jumped into the sea. After hours in the water, trying to help his fellows, HMS Kandahar arrived, and Kit was hauled aboard.
However, there were still men in the sea, too exhausted to grasp the lowered ropes. So, he repeatedly dived back in saving some 30 men, before he drowned. He was posthumously awarded the Albert Medal for saving life at sea.
Winston ‘Blow’ Ide was playing for Queensland in 1937 and was soon on the international rugby stage, only to have his playing days cut short by the Second World War.
Seeing military action in South-East Asia, the strength and determination he demonstrated on the rugby pitch helped Ide through many hard years as a Japanese prisoner of war.
In May 1942, as part of a slave workforce Ide worked on the Burma-Thailand railway and endured horrific conditions for two years. Survivors were sent back to Singapore and Ide, with more than 1,300 prisoners of war, boarded the Rakuyo Maru, destined for Japan. They were torpedoed and it took 12 hours for Ide’s ship to sink.
One survivor said as he was on a raft, “I spotted Blow in the water and called for him to join us. Blow shouted back that some of the boys near him were pretty badly hurt and he would stick by them. Our raft drifted away and I didn’t see Blow again.” A memorial aptly reads: “Blow Ide died as he had always played for his team.”
Allianz stadium has an official war memorial in the rose & poppy gates commemorating rugby players who served and died in all wars. Roses represent the players, ascending and transforming into poppies made from shell casings fired in the great war.
