The Calcutta Cup: The gift that keeps on giving
A couple of months have passed now, I think it’s safe to talk about it… For the uninitiated, the Calcutta Cup is a trophy awarded to the winner of an annual rugby union match played by England and Scotland in the Six Nations. The Cup is currently residing at Murrayfield, the residue of Irn Bru and Drambuie still clinging to its interior, after England defeated England to hand Scotland an 11-6 victory on 6 February, taking the bragging rights to boot. I say the trophy is sitting in Murrayfield, what is actually being displayed in the home of Scottish rugby is a replica. The real Calcutta Cup is too fragile to be moved these days. Decades of damage (with the most infamous incurrence of said damage coming in 1988 via the boots of Englishman Dean Richards and Scotsman John Jeffry, after they decided the Calcutta Cup would make a great ball replacement and used the trophy for a kickabout on Princes Street in Edinburgh) means the real trophy is permanently housed in the Museum of Rugby at Twickenham and is only brought out for public viewing when England are the official holders of the trophy. At the moment, England have some ground to make up if they want to be displaying it in 2022. However, the teams of today are not the focus of this week’s blog. What I wanted to know is, why has the name of a city found in a country whose own rugby governing body (Rugby India) was only established in 1998, been given to the oldest trophy in rugby history?
The Calcutta (Rugby) Football Club was established in early January 1873, after British Army soldiers stationed in Calcutta, no doubt bored of the monotonous routines that came with maintaining control in the Jewel in the British Empire’s Crown, decided it was time to bring the sport to the subcontinent. The demand for a rugby club in the East Indian city grew quickly among the servicemen, following a match on Christmas Day 1872 between a team of 20 Englishmen and a barbarian-esque side of 20 Irishmen, Welshmen and Scots. Barely a week later the club was officially formed, with 137 members joining the club in its inaugural season. The club, as anticipated, was a hit among the British forces, but the locals were less enthusiastic about the sport. A few sporting imports did take off though. Polo and tennis became very popular very quickly, as did Cricket, which is now India’s national sport. The very first first-class game of cricket in India, on the record at least, took place in 1864. Calcutta were involved in this match too, playing a side from Madras. It is not known for certain who won, that particular record has been lost to history. Somehow though, the recipient of the man of the match award is known. Praveen Chauhan was playing for Calcutta, so it can probably be assumed that Calcutta were the victors.
Unlike cricket, tennis and polo which all went from strength to strength in India during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there seems to be no evidence to suggest that rugby was taken to in the same way by the native population. That lack of local interest in rugby meant that when a British Army regiment was withdrawn from Calcutta in 1878, the demand for rugby diminished and soon after the Calcutta (Rugby) Football Club disbanded. When the decision to disband the club was taken, 270 silver rupees were left in the club’s coffers. The remaining money was melted down and used to craft the Calcutta Cup. The trophy was then presented to the RFU, so that it could be used as ‘the best means of doing some lasting good for the cause of Rugby Football’. It has certainly managed that.
The trophy itself is an impressive bit of craftmanship. Standing at about 45cm tall, it has three King Cobras spaced out around its circumference; all three being used as the handles and looking equally angry about it. The body itself is kettle-shaped (or at least shaped like a kettle I used to have), which is as ironic as it is coincidental. The bodywork is engraved with some sort of pattern, I honestly can’t make out what the pattern is, but it looks decent nonetheless. The lid is domed, and on its peak sits an elephant supposedly modelled by one of the viceroy’s very own trunked giants, which would have been a big deal at the time I’m sure. But whether the real elephant, of which the silver one is supposed to be a likeness of, was the Viceroy’s or not and whatever the pattern on the side is supposed to be, one thing is for certain, the Calcutta Cup is a trophy whose aesthetics is worthy of its history. That’s what 270 silver rupees got you in the 1870s. 270 rupees nowadays would get you less than half a pint at Twickenham (admittedly those hypothetical rupees aren’t solid silver). All that only serves to make it more disappointing that the cup was hacked about on Princes Street as if it were an empty Coke bottle discarded in the gutter, or like the HURFC’s player of the year trophy in the streets outside the KC Stadium (thanks again to Hull Uni Shooting Club for lending their own trophy for a photo op).
The soldiers and former Calcutta (Rugby) Football Club members who gifted the trophy to the RFU had hoped the legacy of their East Indian rugby experiment would be used for an annual club competition. An equivalent to the FA Cup, the first of which took place over the 1871/72 season and saw Wanderers beat Royal Engineers 1-0 in the final in front of 2,000 fans. The RFU were less enthused about that proposal; they preferred to make it an international trophy to maintain a ‘gentlemanly’ nature to the fixture. At the time, Ireland’s team were well below the standard of the English and Scottish national teams, and Wales didn’t even have a national side until 1881 (their first game was a mauling at the hands of England). Therefore, it was decided that the trophy would be given to the victors of an annual match between England and Scotland. The first game took place on Scottish soil, at Raeburn Place in Edinburgh. The two teams battled fiercely only to see the game end in a draw. Scotland scored a single drop goal, but England matched that with their solitary penalty. The first Calcutta Cup match played in England came to a more conclusive ending. England won 2 points to 1 (kicks were only worth a point in those days) and became the first team to lift the Calcutta Cup. Scotland didn’t have to wait too long to get their hands on the Cobras. Two years later, Scotland beat England 2 tries to nil in Manchester. It would be a while until they could celebrate a victory on their own patch though. Two more wins would come in England for the Scots before they finally tasted victory at Raeburn Place on 17 March 1894, winning 6-0. It was the second win in a string of four victories between 1893 and 1896, the most wins Scotland have managed consecutively over England. Although, had Ellis Genge not scored a late try (converted by Owen Farrell), in the 2020 iteration of the Cup, they would have matched that record with their most recent victory. But he did so they didn’t. England’s greatest run lasted 13 years, between 1951 and 1963. All in all, England have won 71 times. Scotland are lagging some way behind thanks the English dominance since the second world war and have won 41 times. On 16 occasions the match has ended in a draw, the most recent of those being the 2019 epic, which saw Scotland overturn a 31-0 deficit to lead 38-31 until George Ford scored an 83rd minute try under the posts, which he then converted to level the game at 38-38.
In 1883 the first Home Nations competition took place. It was initially suggested the Calcutta Cup would from then on be awarded to the winner of this newly devised four-way contest. This suggestion was overruled given the popularity of the current arrangement. As a compromise, it was decided that the trophy would be awarded to the winner of the England v Scotland game during the Home Nations competition. It’s a settlement that has endured until today, with the only breaks in scheduling coming because of the two world wars.
The Calcutta Cup was the first ever rugby trophy competed for on the international stage, but it has also been a ‘sporting first’ event on one occasion. On 19 March 1938, the Calcutta Cup contest became the first Home Nations match, and by extension the first rugby match, to be televised. Scotland edged out England 21 – 16 to win the Calcutta Cup, the Triple Crown (earned by beating the other three home nations) and inevitably the Home Nations trophy itself. At the time only 10,000 TV sets existed in the UK, but as transmission was confined to London the number of people watching would have been even fewer than that. Nevertheless, it proved to be a catalyst for televised sporting events in Britain. The Boat Race was televised for the first time a month later as Oxford beat Cambridge by 2 lengths. Later that year the first international football game was shown on telly as Scotland beat England 1-0. The FA Cup final was also televised with Preston North End beating Huddersfield in another 1-0 and between 24-28 June, the first Cricket Test match was televised, as England and Australia drew at Lords in the Second Test of the 32nd edition of The Ashes – a series that also ended in a draw.
In more recent times, the world of rugby has acquired more and more trophies. Every match in the Six Nations seems to have its own trophy attached to it these days. When England play Ireland they’re competing for the Millennium Trophy (first contested for in 1988), The Centenary Quaich is awarded annually to the winner between Ireland and Scotland (1989), The Giuseppe Garibaldi trophy has been given to the winner of France v Italy since 2007 and shockingly Italy have won it twice (2010 & 2013). In 2018, the Dodie Weir Trophy (Scotland v Wales) and the Auld Alliance Trophy (Scotland v France) were both introduced to the roster of individual trophies under the Six Nations bracket. In 1987 the Webb Ellis Cup was introduced, transforming rugby into a global sport. That transformation paved the way for to the creation of the Tri Nations tournament, first held in 1996. In it, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa battled it out with a ferocity and flair not seen before in international rugby. In 2012 it became The Rugby Championship after Argentina joined the Southern Hemisphere trio. Many other continental competitions have come into existence to help bolster the reputation of rugby as a global sport. But as big and as important as some of these trophies may be, none of them have a history quite as rich as the Calcutta Cup. No trophy has been competed for more times. Arguably, there is no trophy, at least a trophy that can be won in a single 80 minutes, that is as treasured by the victors as the Calcutta Cup is. The Calcutta Cup was the product of a failed rugby club if we’re being frank. But with it, the RFU and the SRU managed to sow the seeds of competitiveness and sportsmanship into a three-nation sport that has eventually grown to become a sport played on a global scale. As of 29 March 2021, 105 countries have a formal World Rugby ranking, all with their own competitions to compete in, and rivals to get one over against. But only two rivals can claim to be the first to go head-to-head, and only one trophy has been there to reward the team that gets over the line. Not a bad legacy for a club that wanted to do lasting good for the sport it cherished.
Sources:
Book: Official England Rugby Miscellany – Stuart Farmer
The History of the Calcutta Cup (historic-uk.com)
https://www.swlondoner.co.uk/sport/19032021-rugby-tv-debut-calcutta-cup-televised-83-years-on/
The History of the Calcutta Cup | Scottish Rugby Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcutta_Cup
Cover Image:
Credit & License: JaCastro7, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calcutta_Cup,_England_vs_Scotland.jpg
