Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

48 JemMace, the first world champion in the sport, to give him boxing lessons at a cost of £10. Norfolk-born Mace arrived in Sydney on 3 March 1877 from San Francisco. It was a year later, when Hornby was Down Under with Lord Harris’s touring party and Mace was running a successful boxing academy in Melbourne, that the pair would have met in the ring. Hornby played Rugby Union for Lancashire and at club level for Preston Grasshoppers and Manchester, then one of the strongest sides in the country. Initially he turned out for the Brookhouse Club, a team made up of workers employed in the Hornby mills. They played to the Harrow rules, a crude version of what is now association football or soccer, so at first A.N. didn’t understand Rugby. In a game against Manchester, William MacLaren, uncle of A.C. MacLaren, Hornby’s successor as Lancashire cricket captain, was rushing towards Hornby who called out, ‘What am I to do?’ ‘Tackle him,’ was the reply but, not knowing exactly what a tackle was, he charged MacLaren heavily with his shoulder and knocked him backwards! But, as in all forms of sport and, indeed, in life itself, Hornby was a quick learner and soon grasped the rules of Rugby. Hornby learnt the rules well enough to be capped by England nine times between 1877 and 1882, making his debut against Ireland at The Oval, where he scored the only try of his international career. He played his last game for England at Whalley Range, Manchester, against Scotland. Interestingly, on the team sheet, he was listed as Monkey Hornby. It was said that Hornby was so keen on shooting that he declined an England Rugby Union cap in 1883, preferring instead to go on a weekend shoot. He later refereed at Rugby and was a member of the Rugby Union Committee. At soccer he was good enough to play for Blackburn Rovers in their first match, a friendly against Partick Thistle on 2 January 1878, and in a few subsequent matches. Blackburn won 2-1 in that inaugural fixture with the home side’s goals being scored by Richard Birtwistle. In one of those Rovers’ appearances, in 1882, Hornby scored a goal in an FA Cup tie against Sheffield FC. He would have felt at home playing football for Rovers as their Married to Sport