An 86-year-old rugby ball returns home…
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
We start off today’s assembly with a very special presentation to Maritzburg College of an 86-year-old rugby ball.
Maritzburg College is very proud of many of its former sons: its bishops, generals and admirals, its war dead, its Rhodes Scholars and judges; and its hundreds of sporting internationals.
But, amongst all those sons of this place, few can match PHILIP NLEL, the Head Prefect of 1921, who captained the 1937 Springbok team that won the test series vs the All Blacks 2-1 in New Zealand – in doing so, earning the immortal title of the “Greatest Springboks”. We are honoured that Phillip Nel was one of us, and at the end of last year we were proud to open the Philip Nel Pavilion on Goldstone’s in his honour.
So, what about the 85 year-old rugby ball?
Its story was told by Philip Nel’s widow, Josie, before she died aged 102. As the All Blacks and Springboks prepared to face each other in the 3rd and final test at Eden Park in Auckland, they were on level pegging on one test each, with all to play for. As you will have gathered, the Springboks duly won that all-important test in Auckland in front of 55 000 New Zealanders and with it the test series. After the team celebrations, Philip decided to spend the night with his young wife, and so he told his Springbok team to “go out and paint the town red, as long as you don’t wear your Springbok colours.”
The splendidly named Ebbo Bastard [that was his name!], the tough flanker from Kokstad, had kept the historic match ball from the test, and with two team-mates was walking back to the Hotel at 03h00, playing with the ball. It was suddenly caught up in some telephone wires, and, while they were trying to retrieve it, Officer Gleeson from the local police force arrived and wanted to know exactly who they were, to which Ebbo Bastard responded “We’re Springbok rugby players.” When asked their names, Ebbo introduced himself as BASTARD, after which Officer Gleeson arrested them all, retrieved the ball and locked them up. Ebbo was given permission to ‘phone his captain, Philip Nel, who arrived in the wee hours of the morning, arranged to have them released, and announced that in order to keep the incident out of the newspapers the team would sign the ball and present it to Officer Gleeson, which he duly did.
We now fast-forward 85 years. After a huge amount of detective work, including by the late Jos Robson and Mr Lesur here, the old ball was tracked down, having been passed down through the Gleeson family for all these years.
Jan Walters-Gleeson, whose late husband was the great-nephew of Officer Gleeson from 1937, kindly agreed to donate the old ball to College, and so she delivered it to Old Boy Laurie Sharp in Auckland in October – and Laurie handed it over to his great friend and fellow Old Boy, Ian Cairns, to bring the historic ball to College – across the Indian Ocean, 11 378 km away from Auckland!
We are delighted to be able to welcome Ian and his wife Tessa today, to make the formal presentation. I add that Ian is a very staunch Old Collegian, whose refereeing of the 1st XV on Goldstone’s long ago is also part of College’s mythology. But that’s another story altogether!
And so I call on Ian Cairns of the Class of 1968 to present the old leather rugby ball that was used in the historic third test of 1937, won 17-6 by the Springboks, to the headmaster and Mr Lesur.
Matthew M Marwick
Senior Deputy Headmaster