LIves in Cricket No 31 - Walter Robins

18 Chapter Three Cambridge and Aubrey Faulkner Walter arrived at Cambridge in time for the freshmen soccer trial matches in October 1925. Despite stiff competition for places with the arrival of a number of promising players, Walter was immediately accepted into the team. To the team and its supporters he was soon known as ‘Robbie’ and as he went on to embrace many aspects of university life with the same enthusiasm, a warm welcome was extended to the popular Robbie wherever he went. The first match between Oxford and Cambridge Universities was played in 1874 at Kennington Oval. The fixture, played every December just before the end of the Michaelmas Term, soon became the focal point of each season and as manymatches as possible were fitted into the eight preceding weeks. Cambridge played a number of traditional fixtures every year against representative services sides, the Amateur Football Association, the Corinthians, the Casuals and the London Caledonians. In an attempt to improve their standard of play there were also games arranged against professional clubs including Arsenal, Chelsea or Tottenham Hotspur. By the time Robbie arrived there had been 47 Varsity matches with results standing at 21 wins each but Cambridge had not won for the past three seasons and had been badly beaten 4-1 the previous year. He now found himself a member of a football club where everyone was focused on developing a team that could beat Oxford in two months time. Early results were disappointing, although The Times was impressed by their accurate and creative passing compared to the more popular long-ball game and reported that they looked likely to be ‘the best Cambridge side for years’. This prediction looked accurate when Tottenham Hotspur came to Cambridge with a side that included several first-team players and lost 2-1. Injuries to key players meant only two wins from the last four games before they went to Stamford Bridge to play Oxford in the Varsity match itself and the game ended in a 2-2 draw. Returning to Cambridge after Christmas for the Lent Term there would be no more university matches, but Walter now enjoyed playing for Queens’ College against other colleges in matches that were just as fiercely contested. * * * * * * * During the 1926 Easter holiday, Robbie was booked into the Aubrey Faulkner indoor cricket school on the recommendation of ‘Plum’ Warner. The school had just moved from Richmond to new premises at Fulham, closer to central London, and was the brainchild of the great South African allrounder, Aubrey Faulkner. Settling in England after the 1912 Triangular