Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

41 when the scrimmage had to be reformed. Mitchell and Bromet strove hard to pull their forwards together but it was labour lost.’ The last England Home Nations match was against Scotland at Queen’s Park Club in Glasgow. Five English forwards were relieved of their positions, but Mitchell remained, and was appointed captain. It would have been a happy moment, and the new pack was almost all from Yorkshire. There the happiness stopped. Scotland triumphed 11-0 and the English forwards received their castigation: They ‘ lacked the art of dribbling and picking up. The scrums were carried off in fine style by the Scots. Whilst so much is heard of this Yorkshire severe forward game, there is a lack of skill with the feet, which should support the strong shoving and keen tackling.’ Mitchell must have suspected that he had played his last game for England, as indeed he had. When Frank Mitchell left Cambridge at the end of the summer term of 1896, he also left behind Varsity and international rugby. He did not play rugby at that level again. Yet he could and would still play for Blackheath and for Kent in the Rugby Union County Final of April 1897 which Kent won 9-3. His last important game was as captain of the London and South side v Oxbridge in November 1897. Over twenty years later, in 1919, he resumed Barbarian connections by again joining their committee and becoming one of their selectors and his unofficial coaching for Blackheath continued throughout his life. The Blackheath Club was the source of great pleasure to him for over forty years. Writing about rugby football Frank Mitchell may have owed his development as a writer, after his time as England rugby captain, to his friendship with a slightly older Cambridge undergraduate, Bertram Fletcher Robinson. Born in 1870, Robinson went up to Jesus College Cambridge in 1890 and was there until 1894. He and Mitchell almost certainly became acquainted through their skills on the rugby field and Robinson partially preceded Mitchell in winning three Blues for rugby whilst at Cambridge – in 1891, 1892 and 1893. They did play one Varsity match together at Queen’s Club on 13 December, 1893. Bertram had an interest in journalism for his uncle, Sir John Richard Robinson, was at the time editor-in-chief of the Daily News . Bertram had at Cambridge quickly become interested in writing for the magazine Granta , where he held a student editorial position between 1893 and 1895. A few years before his death, he had given information and ideas to his friend Arthur Conan Doyle, which led to Doyle writing his famed The Hound of the Baskervilles. After Bertram Robinson left Cambridge, he was invited by Max Pemberton (later Sir Max) to write Volume I of the proposed Isthmian Library on Sports and Pastimes, which eventually ran to 16 volumes. Though Robinson did most of the writing of Volume I (Rugby Football) he invited several rugby football internationals to write chapters on aspects of play. So it was that Mitchell – still the captain of England following the last international Rugby Union - as a player and writer