A bygone age of social rugby

Dan Hayes traces the evolution of the Law Society rugby club that came to light recently through the discovery of a cache of memorabilia

An intriguing insight into the early years of the Law Society Rugby Club came to light recently, in the shape of a package of photographs and memorabilia sent to the club’s current secretary, Wedlake Bell partner Peter Watts.


‘The photographs are mainly of young lawyers training in the 1920s and 1930s and the club’s black-tie dinner dance,’ explains Mr Watts. ‘They provide a fascinating record of the era and I felt they should be displayed somewhere, but the club doesn’t have a clubhouse so I thought the Law Society was the best place for them to go.’


The photos were the property of the late Keith Hall, a solicitor who played for the Law Society RFC in the inter-war years, and they were forwarded to Mr Watts by Mr Hall’s relatives.


Also among the memorabilia that was passed on are a tasselled yellow club cap from the 1928-29 season, and some articles describing the characters involved at the time.


‘The Law Society RFC was quite strong between the wars, but it was disbanded at the onset of World War Two, and was then only re-formed in the 1970s by a group of London solicitors,’ explains Mr Watts.


The Law Society RFC today plays in Surrey League One with the likes of Battersea Ironsides, Old Haileyburians and Warlingham.


Roy Richards, partner at London law firm Sharpe Pritchard – who is affectionately known as ‘Fat Roy’ by team mates – is the club’s president.


The club aims to deliver what Mr Watts terms ‘serious social rugby’. Last season saw it achieve an eighth-place finish in the 16-team league. ‘We don’t have organised training,’ Mr Watts admits, ‘because it’s not really compatible with our players’ work commitments.


‘But we do play at a decent level, with more than 20 competitive games per season. Our players are generally people who have played at a pretty good level, so we’ll run through our moves before kick-off and take it from there.’


The Law Society RFC has three teams, with its home pitch at the King’s College Ground at New Malden in south-west London. Membership is not limited to lawyers, and although many of the playing members do come from the likes of Freshfields Bruckhams Deringer, Norton Rose and Herbert Smith, there is also a fair sprinkling of financiers, media types and doctors.


While the rugby club is still popular, it is no longer the hub of players’ lives that it was in the pre-war years. Mr Watts explains: ‘Back then, rugby was one of the main ways of meeting people, but now we find it difficult to get people to commit.


‘Lawyers work harder these days and they are paid a lot more, so they are always disappearing off on stag dos and skiing weekends. And a lot more people coming into the profession are women.’


He adds: ‘The club used to be more closely affiliated to the Law Society, but those ties have been cut and we no longer receive any Law Society funding. But we take most of our players from City of London lawyers. We also organise the Law Society’s Sevens tour in Richmond, where all the major law firms compete, which is held on the last Sunday in September. We get a lot of new talent from that event.’


The highlight of recent years was an impressive run in the Tetley Bitter Vase – the knock-out competition for the nation’s smaller rugby clubs – in 2001.


‘We got through to the semi-finals and were one game away from a big day at Twickenham, but we were drawn against a side from Yorkshire. It was at the height of the foot-and-mouth crisis and I think its players, a lot of whom were farmers, were focusing all their attentions on rugby at the time,’ says Mr Watts.


As with many rugby clubs, the Law Society RFC’s major annual social event is its tour. ‘We have one of these every year,’ says Mr Watts, ‘and we’ll go and play a game or two in Spain or somewhere over the course of a long weekend.


‘Every second year we’ll have a major tour. We’ve been to Argentina, and we were one of the first English teams to play rugby in Cuba, which is somewhere that may not have too many resources [for facilities], but they certainly are fit and strong.’


The team also plays foreign lawyers: ‘We play the Paris Bar every year, and we also play against lawyers’ teams in Dublin and Madrid. There is always a lot of bonhomie and more rivalry when we are playing other lawyers – everyone argues over what the rules are.’