Rugby and Association Football at Ermysted's, 1876-1914
The recent appearance of soccer as a competitive sport at Ermysted’s may raise the odd traditionalist eyebrow, but a delve into the School’s archives reveals that there was a time when Rugby did not reign supreme. The focus of this article will consider why the two codes of ‘football’ occupied centre place at different times in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
The history of sport at Ermysted’s effectively begins with the headmastership of E.T. Hartley (1876-1907), and the transfer of the School to its current Gargrave Road site in 1876/77. The revered figure of Hartley, himself a player with, and later President of, Skipton Football (Rugby) Club, recognised that sport should play an important role in young men’s education. This sentiment was significantly voiced in his first Speech Day address of 1877 where he alluded to the necessity of attending to the physical as well as the metal training of children. The ethos Hartley was one that had flourished in Dr. Arnold’s Rugby School in the 1830s and penetrated the English Public Schools in subsequent decades. Promoted as ‘Muscular Christianity’, team games claimed to be character building and encouraging of qualities like loyalty, team spirit, selflessness and a sense of honour. On a practical level, the new site offered the space for a games field, albeit a sloping one and easier access to Skipton Football Club’s Town Ground.
‘Rugby’ football, with its ‘public schools’ connections, was the obvious choice for winter sport for Hartley’s aspirant, re-launched school, aiming as it was - for a substantial ‘boarding’ clientele. Skipton Football Club, formed in 1874, dominated as it was by the sons of the local industrial and professional elite, must have given the rugby game in the town a prestige value that the Grammar School would have found difficult to ignore.
Available evidence, however, suggests that an immediate adoption of Rugby and a competitive inter-schools fixture list was slow to get off the ground. The ‘Craven Pioneer’ newspaper was able to report a rugby fixture between Giggleswick School and Lancaster Grammar School as early as November 1876, but no Ermysted’s matches are reported at this time. With only 26 boys in 1876 and an academic reputation to establish, any team game provision could not have been extensive. Indeed it would appear that early priority was getting the building infrastructure in place: swimming bath, gymnasium and ‘Fives’ court.
Evidence from the Craven Herald and Pioneer dates Ermysted’s first competitive fixture, with another school as Wednesday, 26th November 1879:
Football A match took place at Ilkley, on Wednesday, between the Scholars of Skipton Grammar School and those of Ilkley Collegiate School, when the latter team proved too strong for the visitors.
Although in this case the newspaper report is ambivalent about which ‘Football’ code Association or Rugby was being played, reports of matches against Sutton Football Club and Saltaire School from 1881 are more explicit that it was the latter.
The Skipton Grammar School Rugby team
of 1884
- its success warranted a photograph
The team contained two members of Staff:
Mr Johns (front row, third from left) and Mr Barham (front
row, far right)
An interesting feature of the game in this era was the playing role of members of staff. Mr. Johns (1882-1892) played for the full Yorkshire County side and provided the cornerstone of the School’s pack. In a school with limited numbers to draw from, his and Mr. Barham’s presence allowed the team to be competitive and the fixture list to expand in the mid 1880s. Opponents by this stage included Bradford G.S., Leeds G.S., Saltaire G.S., Woodhouse Grove School, Skipton ‘A’, Skipton Church Institute and Ilkley Collegiate School. Another notable difference with the later set up was the absence of regular games sessions. Rather, the Headmaster would grant time for ‘football practice’ on an ad hoc basis, presumably when the weather was suitable.
The change to ‘Association’ Football in the autumn of 1890 is recorded by the perfunctory entry in the Chronicles of September:
School Committee votes to adopt Association football rules.
This appears to be a decision made by the students themselves, although what form the ‘School Committee’ took is impossible to determine. The reasons behind this are equally unclear. Lack of success, or anticipated lack of success, might have been a factor, particularly as 1890 saw a dip in boys on roll to 70. It may have been influenced by the burgeoning popularity in the Association game - not dissimilar to the soccer boom in the 1990s - fostered by the setting up of the Football League in 1888 and the growing success in the game of northern clubs. Despite Hartley’s own rugby connections, snippets of evidence seem to indicate that he kept a reserved perspective on its role in the school, and may, like many 19th century headmasters, have regarded ‘games’, and what amounted to virtual student control of it, as a lever for engendering student compliance in wider areas of school discipline.
Thus the ‘round ball’ game took precedence for the next 17 years. Fixtures were numerous (31 in season 1904-05) and largely local. The less confrontational nature of the game enabled the School 1st XI to compete with adult teams on a more regular basis. One such was ‘Skipton Tuesday’ a team of bank clerks and shopkeepers freed on the afternoon of this day by the town’s ‘half day’ commercial closure. Still, the School felt disadvantaged and certain misgivings were voiced in the Easter Chronicles report of 1904:
Nearly all our matches have been played against teams greatly our superiors in weight and in many cases our conquerors have learned their football at the School.
Another sign that soccer had its detractors in the School came in the form of a senior debate in November 1905, where the motion was The supremacy of Association Football over Rugby. The motion was lost by one vote; a senior master, Mr. Williamson, spoke in favour of Rugby claiming that it was for sportsmen, not navvies. That rugby should be the topic of debate at this juncture, may be to do with the huge public interest generated by the touring New Zealand All Blacks a side that was to lose only once in 33 matches.
1902-3 Skipton Grammar School Soccer
team
Members of Staff (back-row) appear as players.
The captain, holding the ball, is Harris
Nevertheless, soccer at Ermysted’s appeared in reasonable health in the early 1900s. Between 1901 and 1907 122 competitive 1st XI matches with other schools were played, an average of over 20 per season; in what turned out to be its final season (1906-07) a playing record of played 19, won 10, lost 6 and drew 3 was recorded no apparent crisis here! More intriguing still, the 2nd XI report (Easter 1907) for that season contained the line: We hope to give them a fuller fixture list next season. This is a powerful indication that the imminent switch to Rugby in September 1907 was not foreseen or planned well in advance.
Unlike the change to Association in 1890, which was the result of pressure from the below, the change to Rugby in the autumn of 1907 has every indication of pressure from above. Taking over as Headmaster from Hartley in September 1907 was the 28 year-old, J.A. Shawyer. He had played the game to a high level, learning it at Durham School and playing for Oxford University and the Cumberland County side.
J.A. Shawyer headmaster 1907-8
Brought in by the Governors to inject new vigour into the life of the School, Shawyer certainly wielded a ‘new broom’ too much of one as his brief one year tenure of office testifies. In this time Ermysted’s then known as Skipton Grammar School - appears to have made a substantial bid to upgrade its status. The School’s adoption of William Ermysted’s coat of arms in 1907 was clearly a gesture in this direction, as was the switch back to ‘Rugby’ football. The ‘Public School’ image of Rugby Union had been sharpened further by Northern clubs’ break away to ‘professionalism’ (later ‘Rugby League’) in 1895. Ermysted’s was now to compete on the rugby field with some of the most prestigious schools in the north of England. A strong indication that Rugby’s reintroduction in 1907 was Shawyer’s decision is provided in the brief ‘Vale’, in the ‘Chronicles’ [Midsummer 1908], marking his departure of these mere 180 words, a sizeable proportion was devoted to his impact on sport:
this is hardly the place to enlarge upon the ideals of scholarship and life that he has set before us, but his influence upon school athletics has been no less marked. During the past year, the change to Rugby football has given us the opportunity of playing Sedbergh, Giggleswick, and Leeds Grammar Schools; cross-country running has come to stay; there has been a record entry in the Sports; the institution of two half-holidays for games has met with great success.
More decisive evidence still, came in a Chronicles match report in December 1909:
For the first time since the reintroduction of Rugby Football into the School by Mr. Shawyer in the year 1907, a team representing the Old Boys turned out
Aided by a Yorkshire Rugby Union campaign for the revival of the game, the School arranged a very satisfactory list of fixtures with teams from Leeds Grammar School, Giggleswick, Sedbergh, Leeds University, Headingley, and others. Of course, none of these clubs send 1st XVs.. [January 1908 Chronicles]. A further encouragement to the successful re-adoption of the game, was the appointment of rugby playing staff: E.J.C. Supple (1907-11) had played for the London Irish club and A.M. McIntosh (1908-14), who became a key figure in the powerful Skipton 1st XV of the late Edwardian era.
The transition to rugby union turned out to be a successful one, albeit with some demoralising, hard lessons along the way. The first competitive match in this new era for the School was against Leeds Grammar School 2ndXV on 19th October 1907, Ermysted’s winning by 19 points to 3. Wins were registered in the next two fixtures before being thrashed heavily by Sedbergh 2nd s, 56 points to nil. The newly introduced individual match report in the Chronicles rather tersely reminded players of the basic essentials of the game:
The only way to stop a rush is by falling on the ball. The team as a whole are too prone to trust to a flying kick in attempting to clear their line, a relic no doubt of Association.
Nevertheless, the game of rugby had established very healthy roots by 1914. Seasons 1911-12, 1912-13 and 1913-14 all saw significantly more wins than losses. The School’s position on the rugby map was acknowledged in 1912 by the Yorkshire RFU sending a strong ‘Yorkshire Wanderers’ XV team to play at ‘Sandylands’. Since 1909 the 1st XV had played an Old Boys XV and in 1912 the latter took on a more regular life of its own, to the extent of playing 14 fixtures in the 1912-13 season. Although frequently short-handed, it suggests great enthusiasm having been generated for the game at Ermysted’s. Moreover, individuals progressed into the high-flying Skipton Football Club, such as J.C. McIntyre; whilst still at School in 1912 he played a key part in the Club’s triumph in the Yorkshire Cup Final against Otley. Unfortunately, like many promising sportsmen of this era, McIntyre was to die in the 1914-8 War. For the School 1st XV the 1913-14 season topped all that had gone before it, highlights being double victories over Bradford and Wakefield 1st XVs. The dye had been cast for the rest of the 20th century for Ermysted’s to be a ‘rugby’ school.
In summary, whilst not losing sight of the reality that sport at Ermysted’s was a recreational activity, it did play an important part in shaping the development of the School. In certain ways it helped to define the wider ethos of the place, and from 1907 seemed inextricably linked in with broader issues of School policy.