CAPE TOWN FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY

A FAITHFUL RECOUNT OF BISHOPS’ ROLE IN SOUTH AFRICAN RUGBY

The school's vital role in rugby's establishment and growth is told with what can only be described as loving care by Paul Dobson in Bishops Rugby A History, published by Don Nelson. The book was launched this week, three days short of 128 years since the first recorded match involving Bishops: they beat "Military and Civilians" by three goals to one on September 13th, 1862.

The game appeared to have captured the general imagination from the start although Dobson refers to a forlorn effort to introduce soccer in 1886. A correspondent signing himself as Jesse wrote in the first school magazine:

"I really think we have had enough of Rugby Football in this Colony. It is now becoming a generally recognised fact in England that this brutal variation of the game is doomed. For my own part I should prefer to see the Association Rules at work in this Colony.”

A storm of protests in subsequent issues ensured that "Jesse's" suggestion never got off the ground.

Dobson points out that the Rugby Union rules of the time were not followed at Bishops until the 1880’s. Before then the boys (and most of Cape Town's young men) amused themselves with what they called "Gog's game", a mixture of codes played at Winchester and Bradfield in England and introduced by the formidable Canon George Ogilvie when he took charge as Headmaster in 1861.

And now read on . . . . . . . .