Camborne~Redruth: The Oldest Continual Rugby Fixture in the World? Part Two

(For those that missed Part One, click HERE)

(With the invaluable collaboration of Nick Serpell, club historian, Redruth RFC.)

Reading time: 25 minutes

…expect a punch to come through the scrum from them…

~ sage advice to a Redruth hooker making his Boxing Day debut, 2000s

You can f___ off, you turncoat…

~ how a player who switched clubs was once greeted by an aggrieved fan, 2000s

As we saw last week, Camborne and Redruth only met on Boxing Day on 20 occasions between 1877 and 1927, which included periods of seriously strained relations between the two clubs. Fixtures were suspended between March 1926 and April 1928. After this date, tempers cooled – slightly…

The Camborne School of Mines controversy: the 1930s to the 1950s

Camborne may have wished they’d played Redruth between their prime years of 1926 and 1928, or not renewed fixtures with them at all. Between 1928 and 1939 they only beat Redruth twice on Boxing Day¹.

The 1930s belonged to Redruth RFC. From 1930-1936, they played 248 games and lost only 33. Their 1934-5 squad boasted 16 players with Cornwall caps, such as Harry Faviell, Les Semmens, Billy Phillips and Francis Gregory, the famous wrestler².

Before war led to the CRFU officially suspending play in late 1939, Redruth gave Camborne a final reminder of their superiority with a 15-0 Boxing Day drubbing. 2,000 watched The Reds run in five tries⁴.

In the dark days of 1940, there was no rugby at all on Boxing Day. Holmans, understandably, remained open, and

…no Christmas music was heard in either town…

West Briton, January 2 1941, p5

Charity and invitation matches were organised later in the war, however. For example:

Of course, war or not, rugby had to be played, and rivalries observed:

The Home Guards of both towns regularly raised XVs too, such as in 1944 when Redruth’s played the Australian Air Force⁵. One assumes that, as many Cornish rugby players held reserved occupations, the standard of play amongst the ‘Dad’s Army’ teams was rather high – but more work needs to be done on wartime rugby in Cornwall.

It seemed that the bad old days of the pre-war era had mercifully vanished; if nothing else, it made sound business sense for Camborne and Redruth to play each other as often as was feasible. The CRFU observed in 1950 that

The spirit in which the game had been played had much improved and happily, there were no strained relations between clubs.

Cornishman, June 15 1950, p8

Behind the scenes, however, matters were slightly different. Camborne had won the 1946 and 1947 Feast Monday fixtures, and pushed Redruth mighty close in the 1947 Boxing Day clash⁶. Echoing the episodes of the early 1920s, Camborne’s ranks for these games were bolstered by students from the Camborne School of Mines (CSM). Legend has it that the then-President of Redruth RFC complained to the CRFU about what they obviously felt to be an unfair practice. The result was the CRFU introducing a bylaw which restricted CSM players to guesting for clubs outside of term-time only.

In fact, it’s all true. In a CRFU minute-book from March 1950 is a reference to bylaw #33. Regarding CSM players,

…it has been ruled that when the school is out of normal session, its members shall be free to play for another club if invited…On occasional holidays the school is not considered as being out of session.

with thanks to Bill Hooper, CRFU

Thankfully, the ruling didn’t lead to yet another cessation of fixtures between the clubs, and Redruth enjoyed another period in the ascendancy, being unbeaten in Boxing Day matches from 1951-1962.

Of course, they boasted players in these years such as Bill Bishop, Bonzo Johns and the great Richard Sharp. (Johns, a coal-merchant, used to arrive for matches completely covered in soot, so I’m told; but then Camborne’s George Blake, a vet, used to rock up plastered in pig-shit.) The only players really in this bracket for Camborne were John Collins and Gary Harris, and Collins’ career was sadly truncated due to injury. Harris’ opponents, recalls a man who knew him, “deserved all they had coming to them”, if they were foolish enough to provoke him. But two men don’t make a XV. John Collins remembers Camborne as “very poor” during this time: small wonder they fielded ringers from the CSM when they could get away with it.

But no structure as yet existed to genuinely encourage player improvement. There were no coaches, Collins said, nor any such thing as a training session. There were no team-talks, or tactical discussions “whatsoever”. You played on your natural ability alone.

It may sound archaic and gung-ho to us, but that’s how rugby was played then; any whiff of any XV taking a professional approach to their sport was viewed with suspicion and contempt. The RFU pathologically clung to the public-school, gentleman-amateur Victorian ethos long after it had become anachronistic. Take, for example, the image below. It’s a team, warming up before their match in a carpark. The XV in question, however, aren’t players from the ranks of junior rugby, making a half-arsed attempt to sweat out last night’s beer. This is the Wales international XV of the 1960s, and the carpark is Twickenham’s. The occasion is the Five Nations Championship.

The RFU’s stance on professionalism hamstrung the game for decades⁸. From the 1960s on, all that started to change.

The times they are a-changin’: the 1960s to the 1980s

Unsurprisingly, Camborne and Redruth were in the vanguard of Cornish rugby’s new approach to coaching and preparation: if it was good enough for the successful Welsh XV of the late 1960s and 1970s, it was good enough for them. Nick Serpell tells me that Redruth first appointed a coach, former Penryn player John Cobner, around this time. Previous to this date, coaching was handled by senior players; a club that actually had a physical coach would have been suspected of professionalism by the RFU.

For Camborne, George Blake and, from 1976, Alan Truscott, were the club’s first coaches. In 1977 David May and Frank Butler inaugurated Cornwall’s first mini/junior section at the club, and were overwhelmed to see over a hundred keen-as-mustard youngsters turn up for the first session. The CRFU ran its first coaching course at Redruth in 1974, and the club’s legendary prop, Terry Pryor, went on to complete the nationally-run scheme⁹.

The youth schemes generated a conveyor-belt of talent. They also produced several generations of Camborne and Redruth players who were told from an early age (that’s if they needed telling) who their biggest rivals were. Now it wasn’t just the colts or seniors who had a big festive derby to contemplate:

From the 1970s to the 2000s, all the players I spoke to emphasised one thing: their coaches at youth level stressed the importance of a game against Camborne or Redruth above all others. In the 1980s, I was told,

…there would even be interest from senior players, who would come and support colts derbies…

But perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Coaching and new levels of fitness made little difference to the results of Boxing Day matches in the 1960s and early 1970s.

From 1963 to 1977, Camborne only won four such fixtures. They were “battered” 17-3 in 1970, and posed “little threat” when going down 13-3 in 1971¹¹.

Even the promise of fame on the small screen failed to inspire Camborne. In April 1977 the BBC’s Rugby Special crew, fronted by Nigel Starmer-Smith, came to the Rec to film the Camborne-Redruth Merit Table game in what was shamelessly hyped as ‘The Granite Men of Cornwall’. (I’m going on hearsay here; the original recordings were sadly wiped.)

Camborne lost 7-3, and one player told me it was a

…rubbish match…no fights…must have been the most boring match ever on the BBC…

Put it this way: Rugby Special didn’t make a return trip¹².

Success for Camborne was limited as Mike Sweeney took over from Sharp at 10 for Redruth. The most memorable victory from this period was on Boxing Day 1967, when Camborne, inspired by their wing John Rockett, won 15-5¹³. Rockett is remembered by one fan as a man who “didn’t know no fear” and, had his brother Eric not tragically died young, they would have formed a fearsome pairing in those years. But it was not to be.

But a period of superiority by one club doesn’t make a rivalry any less intense. Indeed, one Camborne stalwart was heard to remark, on the rare occasion his side managed a win, that

…as someone who wouldn’t even eat a red apple, after tonight’s result I can die a happy man…

It wasn’t until the late 1970s that Camborne’s fortunes against Redruth – and in Cornish rugby generally – began to change¹⁴. Alan Truscott’s coaching began to pay dividends, and a new generation of players came to the fore: Robert Mankee, Nigel Pellowe, Paul Ranford, Dave Edwards, Bobby Tonkin, and later David Weeks, Jon Bowden, Chris Alcock, David Rule, Sireli Matavesi and Steve Rogers. But above all, it was the captaincy and formidable reputation of Chris Durant, a man remembered as 

…no respecter of his opponents’ hairstyles…

West Briton, December 22 1977, p16

…that paved the way for Town¹⁵.

In 1981 Camborne won 30-6, and were the Sunday Telegraph’s (then sponsors of the South West Merit Table) Team of the Week¹⁶. In 1985, Redruth endured a

…hammering from the ‘old enemy’…

West Briton, January 2 1986, p38

…losing 33-3. Not that Camborne had it all their own way in these years. Redruth were still a force to be reckoned with (especially against Camborne), and could boast such players as Mike ‘Mighty Mouse’ Downing (a veteran of over 30 derbies), Nigel Eslick, Brett Pedley, Nick Brokenshire, Marcel Gomez and, when home from Loughborough, Alan Buzza¹⁷. In 1986 they chalked up their first Boxing Day win since 1980, a sequence recognised at the time as “humiliating”¹⁸.

By 1988, the fixture was undisputedly the “top Boxing Day rugby clash” in Cornwall. 3,000 saw Redruth prevail 19-9¹⁹.

But this was no CRFU Merit Table game, or even (and I use the term in full knowledge that there’s no such thing where the two clubs are concerned) a friendly. As the two XVs were in Area League South, this was a league match: the first, RFU-recognised occurrence of such a game on Boxing Day.

All things must pass. The integrity, standing and future in Cornwall of the Camborne-Redruth Boxing Day match was, on the face of it, about to encounter its two biggest threats. And it wasn’t to do with crowd invasions, fighting, internecine bickering or selectorial sleight-of-hand. No, the damage caused to the Boxing Day derby was to come, paradoxically, from two seismic shifts in Rugby Union that sought to improve and modernise the game: a national league structure and, from 1995, professionalism.

Rodda’s Cup: The Modern Era…

The Boxing Day game is…not a true fixture any more…

a veteran player

It’s a damning verdict, and one that deserves attention. I remember being in school back in 1992 and taking malicious delight from the fact that Camborne had stuffed Redruth 40-9; it made for an incredibly cheerful Boxing Day. It wasn’t until I came to look into the history of the fixture for these posts that I discovered that Redruth had fielded an “understrength” XV, and that the clubs had been at loggerheads as to whether the game should go ahead at all, so tight were their league commitments at the time²¹.

How did that discovery make me feel? Cheated. Had we really beaten Redruth? It was like watching Lance Armstrong ride effortlessly away from the peloton to notch up yet another crushing Tour de France win only to be told years later he was in fact off his face on drugs. Sorry, banned substances.

In 1987 though, all this was in the future. Camborne, the highest-placed Cornish club in the new structure (Area League South), had one thing on their mind:

Promotion…and [to] climb further up the ladder to national recognition.

West Briton, August 27 1987, p5

Redruth, a level below Camborne in South West 1, were simply

…hoping to impress in the new league system.

West Briton, August 27 1987, p5

In other words, beating Redruth or beating Camborne wasn’t high on the agenda; the Boxing Day game for 1987, therefore, was purely for local prestige only. For the record, Camborne won 10-7²².

By the end of the 1990-91 season, the boot was firmly on the other foot. Redruth, undefeated, gained promotion to National 3, while Camborne were forced to languish in National 4 South²³.

The Courage League fixture of Easter Monday 1991 was the last league fixture between Camborne and Redruth; a 22-6 victory for the Reds gave them promotion to National 3²⁴. At time of writing, Marcel Gomez for Redruth and John Polglase for Camborne remain the last players to have scored a try in a league fixture against their rivals²⁵.

Apart from the odd CRFU Cup clash, Camborne and Redruth have not played in the same league since 1991. Of course, for the 2023-4 season, all that is set to change. From 1991-2022, the Boxing Day match, reinforced from the early 2000s with the introduction of the Rodda’s Cup, has been the only regular opportunity the two clubs get to meet.

As we saw with the 1992 Boxing Day fixture, at first glance, and maybe to outsiders, the game’s prestige has lessened in recent years. Certainly, at least one current player I spoke to believes so. The impact of professionalism in the game has been the direct cause of this.

From the get-go, back in 1995, alarm bells were ringing in Cornwall over the RFU’s decision to overturn over a hundred years of stubborn (or pigheaded) insistence on amateurism:

A businessman could come along and build a club up by bringing in players…[they] could sponsor individual players, perhaps bring in an international who was just past his prime.

Bill Bishop, CRFU President, qtd in the West Briton, August 31 1995, p19

There was a fear that smaller, less affluent clubs would get left behind. Camborne, then in the fifth tier, possibly fell into this bracket. One of their committee definitely thought so:

…scrapping amateurism was a tragedy…Most clubs could not afford to pay their players…

qtd in the West Briton, August 31 1995, p19

And it all came true. Penzance-Newlyn RFC became the big-budget Cornish Pirates. Camborne’s star players, such as Richard Carroll, Paul Gadsdon, Stuart Hood and Kevin Penrose all joined the Pirates. Carroll, along with tough and talented scrum-half Mark Richards, even did what many believed to be unthinkable and played for Redruth.

Of course, in the money era a player joining a club for the promise of a decent pay is hardly earth-shattering news, but even now, a Camborne player going to play for Redruth, or vice versa, carries a serious stigma. It could see you sent to Coventry.

Alfred, the son of Redruth legend Bert Solomon, joined Camborne from Redruth in the 1930s, and was ostracised by friends from the latter town because of this. Legend has it he was never picked for Cornwall on account of the prejudice of the Redruth members of the selection committee²⁷.

Similar rules apply now. One player who more recently switched clubs said that

…I knew it was a big no-no…it wasn’t received very well by many…I was glad I wasn’t living at home at the time…

Another was at a Cornwall training session with a clubmate when he was approached by a representative of the rival team. He remembers his pal having a

…look of absolute horror on his face…

…as the offer was metaphorically slapped on the table. But he declined:

If I left…my friends would have disowned me…

Another who joined the arch-enemy was approached by a former fan of his in a pub:

…you can f___ off, you turncoat…

But players followed the money. By 2002, Camborne were in the Western Counties West league – tier seven. Redruth, by contrast, flourished, and have consistently remained in the third or fourth tier for over thirty years. Notable players from this period include Craig Bonds, Rob and Paul Thirlby, Richard Newton and Joel Matavesi – who, of course, began his career at Camborne.

The contrasting fortunes of both clubs is borne out in the Boxing Day results. From 1995 to 2022, Redruth have won 19 matches; Camborne, 6. In 2016 Redruth won by a whopping 54-7. Before full-time, the

…Camborne faithful had already begun to depart…

Redruth RFC report²⁸

Redruth began to field less-than full-strength XVs, in order to keep key players fresh. There was an “A” XV in 2000²⁹, and a “development” XV in 2009³⁰. One Camborne player from the time found this “humiliating”:

I remember at the time being hugely angry that they saw themselves as too good to play us, for me personally I wanted to challenge myself against the best players and best side in Cornwall at the time…

(This player does now concede, however, that Redruth were “right” in playing such XVs, purely in order to even up the competitiveness of the fixture.)

The general nature of the Boxing Day fixture in these years can be summarised by reading the comments by Redruth’s Director of Rugby on the 2012 edition, which they won 17-5:

Camborne played well and put us under the pump at times and some of the guys had to raise their game…fair play to Camborne they played well and gave it a real go…

Redruth RFC report³¹

(Just the kind of thing you would expect to say about a combative but ultimately inferior opponent.)

However, Camborne started to field second-string XVs also, for the same reason as Redruth, such as in 2008³². In 1997, both clubs played their full Reserve XVs³³. Crowd attendances dwindled: only 700 turned up in 2010, 1,200 in 2021³⁴.

So…is the Camborne-Redruth Boxing Day fixture still a ‘true’ fixture?

Of course it isn’t, especially in terms of league and professional rugby. It’s a tradition, a symbol representative of the timeless rivalry between the two towns, known locally as the ‘mining derby’. Its importance is now in and of itself. Yes, Camborne and Redruth are competing in the same league for the 2023-4 season, but on Boxing Day 2023, the only thing at stake is the Rodda’s Cup…and local prestige.

And if you think the Rodda’s Cup doesn’t matter, think again. In 2019 the

…Cherry & Whites are the holders but the Reds are determined to get the trophy back, so are sending their full 1st team squad of 25 players to the REC…

Camborne RFC report³⁵

Redruth won 39-6. A Camborne player told me that, if they had been in a higher league at this time, 

I would have pushed for us to field a full strength side on at least one occasion to put them in their place!

Camborne against Redruth, players from the 1970s have said, is

…the game of all games…you wouldn’t miss it for the world…

…and that sentiment holds true, especially when you speak to the last couple of generations of combatants. The game is

More important than league positions outside of promotion or relegation…

Or:

…it is just iconic and everyone looks forward to it…

I was told that playing your first Boxing Day match

…meant more to me than my league debut…

The reason given for this is simply that

Camborne and Redruth is the heartbeat of Cornish rugby…

The following is from a current player. For him, the game is

Massive. Redruth never wanted to lose to Camborne as they were the higher ranked club. For Camborne it was a chance to take a scalp…Because they weren’t in the same league it was bragging rights for 12 months…

Coaches emphasised this. I’ve been informed that at Redruth, under Nigel Hambly, the policy for a Boxing Day game was to treat it as a serious league fixture. You don’t want to lose to Camborne. Camborne, under Liam Chapple, would play to their underdog tag and look to harry their superiors into mistakes. Beating Redruth would be fantastic.

Therefore, what better fixture in which to blood the players of the future? For example, in the 2007 edition Camborne picked a promising 17 year-old called Josh Matavesi, who kicked a 78th-minute conversion to give his side a 7-6 victory³⁶.

Imagine that: a crowd of a thousand, all the expectation, all the history, all the occasion. If you can handle that pressure, you can handle anything. And lest we forget, to lose on Boxing Day is

…devastating. I would sulk for a week…

And it doesn’t take much for a modern Boxing Day fixture to revert to the mad, bad old days of the 1920s:

Before this particular match, the captains of both sides came to a gentleman’s agreement: any nonsense, we’ll step in and put a halt to it right away.

In the opening seconds of the game, a Camborne player “ploughed straight into” his opposite number, and “it all kicked off”.

The captains ran up, looked at each other, possibly exchanged a word or two, forgot their earlier vows and proceeded to go at it themselves. As one player who took part (in both game and brawl) said, it

…pretty much set the tone, and it happened right in front of the west bank and that set the crowd up nicely too…

The referee finally prevailed, yet there were no cards, no sendings-off, just a few stern words of no more of that please, lads. This was, a player said,

…proper rugby…

Though some might disagree. One reporter opined that

…spectators gloried more in seeing their pets give hard knocks to members of the opposite side than in witnessing good football…there was the disgraceful spectacle of a fight in front of the grandstand…a large number of spectators gathered round, evidently pleased with the diversion afforded.

But this wasn’t written in response to the events of the 2003 match; it was written after a Camborne-Redruth match that took place back in 1902³⁷. It may very well be that while the game changes and evolves, and players come and go, and the fortunes of both clubs rise and fall, one thing remains resolutely and utterly constant: 

The rivalry…

Indeed, it’s hard to disagree with the following statement:

This traditional Boxing Day fixture seems to have a special place in the hearts of Cornish rugby supporters…

Packet, December 31, 2008

As one lifelong rugby fan put it,

…local derbies bring out a little bit more…

From 1877 to 2022, Camborne and Redruth have met on Boxing Day on 111 occasions. Redruth have 73 victories on this date to Camborne’s 28.

On September 9 2023, 3,000 incredibly thirsty people from both towns came to Camborne RFC to watch the first league fixture (National League 2) between the two clubs since 1991. It was as much an occasion and a reunion as a game of rugby. Under a blazing sun, Camborne finally prevailed 36-29.

Such days are what sport is all about.

Many thanks for reading; follow this link for more top blogs on all things Cornwall: https://blog.feedspot.com/cornwall_blogs/

References

1. With thanks to Nick Serpell for providing this information.
2. Tom Salmon, The First Hundred Years: The Story of Rugby Football in Cornwall, CRFU, 1983, p72.
3. From: https://www.cornishmemory.com/item/BRA_17_004. For more on Gregory, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Gregory_(sportsman)
4. West Briton, December 28 1939, p5; Cornish Post and Mining News, December 30 1939, p5.
5. West Briton, December 21 1944, p6.
6. West Briton, November 14 1946, p7; November 20 1947, p2; January 1 1948, p2.
7. See the trailer for this brilliant series, which traces the genesis of modern rugby coaching, here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/64375494
8. See: Tony Collins, A Social History of Rugby Union, Routledge, 2009.
9. From: Tom Salmon, The First Hundred Years: The Story of Rugby Football in Cornwall, CRFU, 1983, p103-5.
10. For more on Pryor, see: https://www.redruthrugbyclub.co.uk/news/terry-pryor–rip-2525196.html
11. West Briton December 31 1970, p14; December 30 1971, p14.
12. See: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2022/12/01/__4-12-22_rugby_special_part_three/
13. West Briton, December 28 1967, p12.
14. A period I’ve traced here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2022/11/20/rugby-special-part-one/
15. See my profile on Chris here: https://the-cornish-historian.com/2023/02/03/rugby-special-final-part/
16. West Briton, December 31 1981, p28.
17. See more on Alan Buzza here: https://www.therugbypaper.co.uk/features/my-life-in-rugby/18204/my-life-in-rugby-alan-buzza-loughborough-students-strategy-manager/
18. West Briton, December 31 1986, p20.
19. West Briton, December 30 1988, p21.
20. From: https://www.redruthrugbyclub.co.uk/teams/38088/match-centre/0-3344661/report
21. West Briton, July 9 1992, p20; the match report can be found in the West Briton, December 31 1992, p17.
22. Packet, January 2 1988, p34.
23. Both clubs’ progress through the leagues can be traced on their respective Wikipedia pages.
24. I am grateful to Nick Serpell for providing this information.
25. West Briton, 4 April 1991. With thanks to Nick Serpell and Martin Symons.
26. From: https://www.pitchero.com/clubs/cambornerfc/teams/24388/match-centre/0-4235472/report
27. From: Bert Solomon: A Rugby Phenomenon, by Allen Buckley, Truran, 2007, p45.
28. See: https://www.redruthrugbyclub.co.uk/teams/38088/match-centre/0-3344661/report
29. Packet, December 30 2000, p29.
30. Packet, December 30 2009.
31. See: https://www.redruthrugbyclub.co.uk/teams/38088/match-centre/0-1562003/report
32. Packet, December 31 2008.
33. West Briton, December 21 1997, p7.
34. See: https://www.pitchero.com/clubs/cambornerfc/teams/24388/match-centre/0-308608, and https://www.pitchero.com/clubs/cambornerfc/teams/24388/match-centre/0-5082028/report
35. See: https://www.pitchero.com/clubs/cambornerfc/teams/24388/match-centre/0-4610916
36. Packet, January 9 2008.
37. West Briton, January 16 1902, p5.