Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

37 Chapter Six Rugby Union – as a player and writer For Frank Mitchell the changing seasons meant alternating between playing rugby and cricket. His cricket career as a first-class player covered twenty years. With rugby his playing days were over a much shorter period culminating in the captaincy of his country in early 1896. In a book that deals largely in chronological order with the events of his life, it is at this point that a single chapter about his rugby playing days and then his writings on the game seems to be most appropriately placed. Club, Varsity and International rugby Frank Mitchell, having been rugby captain at his school and at Pocklington Football Club in Yorkshire, and then having played for the Sussex County team, was invited for trials in 1891 with the Blackheath Rugby Football Club. He made his debut for Blackheath as a full back, but it was not long before he established a position in the scrum. It was then inevitable that on becoming an undergraduate he would seek to play for his college team at Gonville & Caius, and hope to win a position in the University side. Gonville & Caius had a strong side and it was a common occurrence for one or more of their players each year to win a rugby Blue. Oxford and Cambridge had been playing one another at rugby since 1873. Neither team had, in the twenty years before Frank Mitchell joined the Cambridge team, secured an advantage of substance over the other, so these matches were keenly contested and attracted good spectator support. In the 1890s the teams played their Varsity match, like the athletics teams, at the Queen’s Club in London. The matches were played over the tennis courts which must then have needed remedial work before becoming fit again for their summer usage. The first Twickenham stadium was not complete and available for use until 1909. So on 13 December 1893, at the end of his first term at university, Mitchell, as a freshman won the first of his sporting Blues. Before many thousands of spectators he joined his Caius colleagues W.E.Tucker and A.F.Todd as a forward in the Cambridge pack. There was strong forward play on each side during that game but Oxford won 3-0 with the only try of the game, then worth three points. Volume 2 of Fifty Years of Sport contained this comment: ‘Cambridge may be considered fortunate to get off with only one try scored against them, and for that they have to thank mainly their forwards especially Mitchell.’ In early 1894 he was elected as a member of the famous Barbarian Football Club on the nomination of the Blackheath Club. The Barbarians, formed in 1890 on the initiative of William Carpmael of Blackheath and Cambridge