WIMBLEDON AT THE HEART OF SCOTTISH HOCKEY

Wimbledon Men’s Hockey Club had been at the heart of English hockey in the 1890s. But after the formidable E.L. Clapham played his last game in 1903, nearly 70 years would pass before another England player would have the word Wimbledon in brackets after his name. George McGrath played for Great Britain in the 1920 Olympics, but that was all. The Club was no longer at the forefront of the English national game.

However, for a few years in the late 1920s, Wimbledon was at the heart of the Scottish national team, and in the Spring season of 1927 three of the Club’s players appeared in one of Scotland’s most memorable matches.

Hockey had started later in Scotland than in the other three home countries, only developing when English schoolmasters travelled north to teach. The first recorded hockey match north of the border was between Fettes College and Loretto School in March 1891, eight years after the founding of the Wimbledon Club. Rugby was more popular, with many regarding hockey as a women’s game. In fact, the Scottish Women’s Hockey Association was founded in 1900, a year before the Men’s.

With little cricket played in Scotland, the pitches were mostly football and rugby fields, far less suitable for the development of hockey skills, and the standard of the game did not match that played in the London area. Consequently the selectors often scouted the Southern game in search of players whose ancestry qualified them to play for Scotland.

In 1912 Scotland beat England for the first time, winning 2-1 in Edinburgh, and in the evening the English captain ceremonially burnt his stick in the foyer of the North British Hotel. But this was an isolated success, and their next nine meetings all ended in English victories, with an average score of 6-1. So there was little expectation of success when three Wimbledon players travelled north to play for Scotland on Saturday 26 March 1927.

The centre half and captain was George Mackay, a doctor who had trained in Aberdeen and whose marriage had taken place in London on the Friday, forcing him to spend his wedding night on the overnight train to Aberdeen.

The centre-forward was Nigel Kirkpatrick, of Marlborough and Oxford, whose brother Colin, another Wimbledon member, had also played for Scotland before going to the United States to work. And the inside right was the young Crawford Morley-Brown, who had come down from Aberdeen to London as a small boy when his father had been appointed editor of  Sporting Life. He had been to school at Felsted and was an outstanding batsman and cover fielder in the Wimbledon cricket side.

According to The Times, the pitch at the King’s College ground was in good condition, though ‘a trifle slow’, and, after a sharp hailstorm delayed the start, ‘England, if anything, had the better of the game in the first ten minutes.’ Then Scotland, through Kirkpatrick, went into a two-goal lead. The English brought it back to 2-1 from a penalty corner, but the first half ended amid great cheers from the Scottish crowd.  Never in the history of the fixture had the Scots scored more than two goals, but they reached the interval leading by a score that must have been beyond their dreams:

Just before half-time, following a corner, a good pass from Kirkpatrick was beautifully flicked into the goal by Morley-Brown. Then from the bully-off the Scottish forwards went down and Kirkpatrick, working his way to the left, sent a wonderful reverse-stick pass from the line onto the stick of Morley-Brown, who was in the goal-mouth, and the latter again flicked the ball into the net. At the interval, therefore, Scotland held a lead of three goals.

After this, the second half was anti-climactic. The English fought back to 4-3, but their attempts to level the score ran into a determined and muscular set of Scottish defenders:

Mackay was the most conspicuous, and played a very fine spoiling game, though it must be admitted that at times he used his body too much in stopping some very dangerous English rushes towards the finish. Despite desperate attempts to equalise, the Scottish defence held out and retained their lead to the end.

It was 4-3 at the final whistle, and the Scots were in fine spirits when the two teams enjoyed their evening at the New Palais de Dance. It is still the only time in the history of a fixture begun in 1903 that Scotland has scored four goals, and all of them came from the sticks of Wimbledon players.

The Sunday Observer, a Scottish paper, spoke of the Wimbledon players’ contribution in ‘Scotland’s Rise to Supremacy’:

The captain and centre half, Dr G.W. MacKay, was a tower of strength not only in the playing sense but as a most inspiring leader. His game is full of vigour, his tackling is relentless and daring, and his placing powers have greatly gained since he made his headquarters in London and joined the Wimbledon club.

Two other members emanate from the famous Surrey organisation: Nigel Kirkpatrick and C. Morley-Brown. Both have assimilated to their native dash, the polish and positional craft of the traditional Southern forward. Each also is a beautiful shot.

The next year Colin Kirkpatrick, a speedy right wing, returned from America, and he teamed up with his brother and Morley-Brown in a threesome in the Scottish forward line. But by the time England next travelled to Scotland in 1929, Nigel had left for a business appointment in the States, and Morley-Brown’s only Wimbledon companion in the Scottish side was Colin.

They were all-round sportsmen: Colin Kirkpatrick a Wiltshire cricketer and one-time college lightweight boxing champion, and Crawford Morley-Brown soon to give up cricket to become an outstanding golfer.

The match was held on Saturday 9 March 1929, on the same afternoon that the ground of the Wimbledon ladies, Merton Abbey, played host to their England-Scotland match. The whole pavilion, as Kathleen Watkins later recalled, was turned  into a tea hut, with the members acting as waitresses:

It was cramped quarters there, even with the dressing room panels taken down, and at least one English player had a cup of tea poured right down her blazer by one of our “nippies”.

The English ladies won 4-1, but at Glasgow’s Lesser Hampden Park football ground, on a pitch described by The Times as ‘more or less a mass of rolled-in holes’, there was ‘a big surprise’ as for a second time in three years the Scots beat England, this time by three clear goals. Morley-Brown scored the first from a corner. Then in the second half the two Wimbledon players on the right produced a succession of good moves, one eventually leading to a second goal. Then followed ‘the best movement of the game’:

Morley-Brown got possession and, drawing Schofield, gave Kirkpatrick a beautifully timed pass. The latter outpaced Block and sent across a perfect centre, which Knight took at full speed on the edge of the circle and beat Wilson with a brilliant shot.

They were moments of glory for Scottish hockey, but there were soon rumblings of discontent at the presence in their national side of these Anglo-Scots, and by 1933 Wimbledon’s contribution had ended.

Crawford Morley-Brown had twice been in a Scottish side that had beaten the Auld Enemy and, with no further victory till 1969, it would be a long time before anybody else could say that.

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