News: Where Are Those Old Saints Now ?

pic courtesy Chris Hoddle
By tedge
June 29 2015

In the second of our off-season summer articles, COYSDC message-board contributor, Tedge, asks what we know of former Saints players. As the title suggests, where are they now?

Where Are Those Old Saints Now ?

I recently turned seventy so I guess that makes me an old fogey on this board and an obstreperous one at times. As a born and bred Northamptonian my first love was football and I was an avid Cobblers fan in my early years. However, attending the Boys Grammar School I was introduced to rugby and taught the game by Saints greats Phil Taylor, Frank Sykes and Roger Hosen. Being on the short side I was not physically well equipped for the game but was encouraged by “Smiler” Randall and managed a season in the school’s under 16 second team. Being the second XV of that age group we played matches against the local secondary schools like Bective and Roade where rugby was not the main game. I think the Technical College (later Trinity) was also a regular opponent. The school’s first fifteen’s fixture list included public schools like Oundle, Bedford, most of the grammar schools in the Midlands and even “men’s” sides like RAF Halton. Quite a few players were good enough to represent England Under 19’s

I first watched Saints in the late 1950’s when Saints carried all before them in English club rugby. The school produced a steady stream of new blood and players from my era who later made their mark included Andy Johnson (considered “the best hooker not to play for England”), Bob Taylor, Glen Robertson, Brian Page, Geoff Allen, Bob Kottler et al. Saints in their turn supplied international players like the aforementioned Sykes, Underwood, Hancock, Hetherington, Jeeps, White, Cannell, Butterfield, Brian West, David Powell and many others whose names don’t automatically spring to mind.

Many of these also qualified for East Midlands which as a “county” side was usually amongst the also-rans in those amateur days but did have the one outstanding annual Mobbs Memorial Match against the famous Barbarians. I think it was played alternately at Franklin’s Gardens and Goldington Road, usually on a Wednesday afternoon in March. Some of us were allowed off school to watch the fixture, guaranteed to see the stars of the day in the flesh. Although the match has been resurrected by Saints of late it did begin to lose its glitter during the professional era as more and more fixture pressures built up. As I write this we are commemorating the outbreak of the first world war which adds a certain poignancy to memories of the match. In those days FG had a capacity of around 5/6000 and it was invariably packed for the Mobbs match.

Saints continued in the elite of club rugby well into the Sixties when their fixture list included all the top teams in England and Wales, the latter often visited on the annual Easter tour when it was not unusual to play 3 matches in 4 or five days against the likes of Cardiff, Llanelli, Aberavon, Pontypool and Bristol. For reasons I haven’t been able to put a finger on there was a gradual decline in Saints’ fortunes in the seventies and eighties and it became rarer for its players to represent their country, except for shining examples such as Gary Pearce.

Getting back to the title of this piece, inevitably a good number of the players mentioned have sadly died, but some will still be around – Bob Taylor, Geoff Allen and “Piggy” Powell are still involved with the club – and it would be interesting for any other oldsters to dredge their memories and throw some light on what happened to them and their peers in their post-rugby careers.