Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

45 and Badminton volumes are his only rugby contributions to books edited by others. He remained active in general rugby journalism and through articles in magazines. He wrote for the St James’s Gazette in 1897 an article entitled A Crisis in Rugby Football , in which he expressed his concerns about the growth in Rugby League. The Gazette was a London evening newspaper which was published between 1880 and 1905, when it merged into the Evening Standard . Rugby League was a bête noir for Frank Mitchell. His writing reflected his clear views. Six years later in 1903, speaking at a conference in South Africa, he said: ‘The Rugby game, as its name implies sprang from our public schools. It has been developed by our leading London clubs and universities; and why should we hand it over without a struggle to the hordes of working men players who would quickly engulf all others?’ Nearly 30 years after his Isthmian and Badminton contributions, he was still promoting the cause of amateur rugby, with an article in the Edinburgh Review of January 1928. This erudite quarterly magazine was to close in 1929 but did run to over 500 issues, and Mitchell was given the opportunity over eleven pages to reflect on the then modern history of rugby football. His article and another writer’s piece on fox hunting were the only sporting articles to appear in the 40 issues of the 1920s. What would he have thought of the rugby union code today in the light of this sentence that he penned? ‘ When too much money creeps into the amateur game, then the anomalies and the troubles begin which are reflected on the sport itself.’ In his playing days he would never have played rugby or any game professionally, but some doubts about the future of amateurism in cricket crept into his mind after World War I, as will be noted later. Rugby Union - as a player and writer A confident, fit Frank Mitchell photographed for ‘Famous Footballers of 1895’.