Recently, Mr. Trevor Roberts a former player in the 1970s from Rugby Lions nicknamed The Lions, reached out to the club president in search of a match programme from a fixture at Sunbury around 1972. Mr Roberts had lost his original programme.

Rugby Lions is rugby union club based in Rugby, where the game was founded, and play their home matches at Webb Ellis Road. They are one of only three teams in England permitted to wear an all-white strip, with England and Rugby School being the others.
Unfortunately, after much research no trace of a match programme could be found but during further communication with Trevor a story of his involvement in the game emerged, together with a press cutting of the teams and we are grateful to Trevor for allowing us to retell his story.

“I am a former player who played for Rugby Lions for most of the 1970s. I also played 2nd row for Warwickshire and a Midlands guest side called the Mercians. I was lucky enough to play for the Mercians against a London Irish President's XV when Fred Williamson was the club President.

The game was due to take place on a Sunday at London Irish’s ground in Sunbury.
The Irish side had been selected by the London Irish President, Fred Williamson, and the Mercians selectors had chosen a strong representative side too. Both sides involved many English and Irish internationals and British and Irish Lions.

There were 16 internationals picked and a number of the players who were not internationals at that time were capped later in their careers.

However, Nigel Horton of Moseley, who was the current English second row got injured during a Moseley match on the Saturday and that evening, while I was still at the Rugby Lions clubhouse, I received a call from the Mercians’ selectors asking me to play. So, I took Nigel’s place for the Sunday game.

Imagine my surprise on arrival at the ground to find that I would be pitted against the Irish and British and Irish Lions captain, Willie John McBride.

The game started and at the first lineout it was our throw in. I leapt for the ball and caught it two handed, feeding our scrum half. Imagine my pride at having just beaten the British and Irish Lions captain. At the second lineout it was the Irish President’s team throw in.
I reckoned that it would be hard to get the ball two handed on their throw in and so I went up single-handed and managed to tap the ball back to our scrum half. However, as I recall I found myself on the ground having received a massive punch from Willie John. He politely bent down to pick me up and whispered “Listen, this is an invitation game. You win your ball and I win mine.” I thought that was quite a fair compromise. It was a tremendous game which was an amazing experience for me. I seem to remember it finished about 32:30 to the Irish.

Many years later I heard that Willie John would be giving an after-dinner speech at a neighbouring club close to where I was living in Warwick, so I bought a ticket. After his speech, I spoke to Willie John, showing him a copy of the match programme, which had been amended to include my name instead of John Horton’s and I told him the story about the game and his punch. He smiled and said in his broad Irish accent “I don’t remember the punch, but I can certainly relate to the sentiment.”

Press cutting from the match.

London Irish Amateur Rugby Football Club are very grateful to Trevor Roberts for allowing us to relate his story.