A dip into Tynedale RFC’s records would suggest that recent criticisms of the England squads’ tactics and the suggestion that the over reliance on kicking is a modern phenomenum could be misplaced. Two records demonstrate this point:-
• At Tynedale’s Jubilee Dinner in 1926 one of the guests, Mr.T.H.Hodgkinson, a former President of the Cumberland RFU and President of Carlisle RFC, in toasting the Tynedale club recalled that during his playing days of six seasons with Cumberland he could only remember ever receiving two passes. One was not intended for him; the other went behind him!
• In Tynedale’s “Centenary History” 1876-1976 the congratulatory message in the foreword from Dicky Jeeps, President of the Rugby Football Union encouraged the club “to play a brand of rugby that may sound old fashioned, namely using the whole fifteen as attackers and employing wing-threequarters in their proper role as ball carriers and not simply as chasers of kicks”.

Even in more recent times at Tynedale Park kicking of the rugby ball seems to split the views of the many attending rugby experts with advisory screams of “Kick It” often balanced by similarly passionate calls of “Don’t Kick It”!!!

The more it remains the same.
D.F.Hamilton