Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

38 University, have become one of the most famous of British touring sides with their matches against long established clubs and against visiting international sides. The Barbarians still only play a few games each year, and Mitchell played his first game for them against Carlisle and District at Carlisle on 31 March 1894, when he made two conversions. His next game for them in April 1894 was against Rockcliff at Whitley in Northumberland. His four subsequent games for the Barbarians, against Hartlepool Rovers (twice), South Shields and Liverpool, until his last match in December 1897 seemed to be when he was living at his parents’ Yorkshire home during university vacations. He joined the committee of the Barbarians in late 1895, and as he never lacked confidence, persuaded the committee that the Barbarians should have a tie, and that the colours should be those he had used for his team’s cricket tour of North America earlier that year. Mitchell recalled in 1935: As we were Oxford and Cambridge men I had a broad stripe of each blue, with a narrow white one to break it up. Later on I was playing for the Barbarians, travelling with W.P.Carpmael who founded the club, and he said to me that he thought the Ba-Ba’s should have a nice tie. I suggested that as there were only fourteen of us and it was very unlikely that I should ever take a team abroad again, that they should have mine. He accepted, and the Ba-Ba’s wear my colours today. In November 1894 Mitchell scored a try and a conversion for the Oxford and Cambridge side against the London and West team, and then on 12 December 1894 he won his second rugby Blue. His Caius colleague, the Bermuda-born William Tucker, later an England international was now captain of Cambridge, and A.F.Todd also again played. There were 10,000 spectators to see the sides draw the match with a converted try apiece. The reporter for Fifty Years of Sport wrote: ‘ Just before half time Mitchell came through a scrum with the ball at his feet and backed up by half a dozen other forwards took it three parts the length of the field. There was hot scrimmaging on the Oxford line and eventually Jacob dodged over. Mitchell kicked a fine goal.’ This 1894 match was inadvertently ended by the referee, Colonel Lawrence, who blew for full time ten minutes early. Later the Colonel moved to Blackheath and whenever Mitchell met him on the famed Common, Mitchell would start the conversation by asking ‘ What’s the time Colonel?’ Mitchell had now been watched by the national rugby selectors and was chosen to play for South v North in what was a traditional trial match preceding the winter internationals involving England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, that would commence in January 1895. The South v North game at Blackheath was only three days after the Varsity match, and as well as his colleague Tucker, Mitchell was joined in the South team by four Blackheath players including his friend Sammy Woods. The match was a triumph for both the South and for Mitchell. This fixture dated back to 1874 but never before had there been such a one-sided result as the South won by 37 points to nil. There were five goals and four unconverted tries. The Times writer wrote of the brilliant dash of the Southern forwards, and Rugby Union - as a player and writer