LE Denton stands resolutely with his 1913-14 Saracens team-mates in the surviving team photo, looking every inch the exact type of steadfast, solid and dependable forward that you would always want on your side. He is recorded as playing for the club in this final season before the outbreak of war, appearing in the fixture…
J S Morris is one of Saracen’s fallen heroes, who gave his life for King & country on the battlefields of the First World War. This much we know, as his loss is directly referred to by ORG Williams in his 1926 publication ‘Saracens Football Club – A Brief Outline of its First Fifty Years‘. However,…
Alfred Ball’s war got off to something of a slow start. The battalion, stationed on The Strand in August 1914 was moved to Bedmond (near Hemel Hempstead) and then Watford before mobilisation to France in March 1915. Alfred appears not to have always travelled with them to the front line according to De Ruvigny’s roll…
John Stanley Greer was a member of the 1913-14 1st XV who served in WW1
As we have already seen, the sport of rugby moved quickly to suspend participation upon the outbreak of the First World War, with the RFU Committee recording their decision on 4th September 1914 that “Club and County fixtures arranged for this season be cancelled and that, all being well, they should be carried over to…
During the course of our research on the Saracens players of the 1914 era, we have become accustomed to tracing their migratory routes from all corners of the UK to North London, where many of them settled as young men, combining employment in the capital with lacing on their rugby boots at Saracens each weekend.…
The Saracens WW1 project is fuelled by a lot of hard work from everyone concerned in trying to trace the players who served in World War One, and more often than not the research is done from behind a desk with the aid of email, digitised records, telephones, and networking within the rugby business. But…
Frederick ‘Chappie’ Chapman first appears in our surviving Club records in the 1913-14 team photo, the last Saracens team to take the field until the 1919/1920 season. Wearing an early scrum cap, a dapper moustache, and standing next to CJB Buckheim on one side and the Honourable Treasurer J.G. Brodie on the other, he has…
Percy Heddon makes his first appearance in our surviving Club records in the team photo of 1912-13, where he is standing between AL Baker and DH Keith and behind two especially long-serving players CJ Leach and WA Andrew. His earliest recorded match for the 1st XV was on 26th October 1912, where he played as…
Walter Cairns Black was an integral part of the Saracens side of 1913-14, a side that was to sadly contain no fewer than 6 casualties to the Great War. A proud Scot, and a chemist by trade, Black crossed the whitewash three times that season, a considerable contribution for a forward in the era. Strong-jawed,…
Saracens Rugby Club and W.W.1 