Durham have shone since rugby's dawn

Brendan Gallagher continues his series looking at rugby’s great schools

- Brendan Gallagher

THEY have been playing rugby at Durham School for a very long time – in fact the rugby club there is recognised as one of the oldest in the world with records showing the school rugby club was founded in 1850.

Only Guys Hospital (1843), Rugby school (1845) and Sherborne (1846) indisputably predate them while St Paul’s also share the founding date of 1850.

It is also well recorded that it was two pupils at Durham School – Francis and Alexander Crombie – who effectively introduced rugby to Scotland when the family moved back to Edinburgh and the brothers took a booklet of the law of rugby football with them which were seized upon when they attended Edinburgh Academy.

It was the rugby playing old boys of Durham School that formed Gosforth Rugby Club in 1877 and that great club adopted the school colours of green and white for over a century before morphing into Newcastle Falcons. As long ago as 1894 local artist TM Henry sat on the touchline to paint the team in action against unknown opposition, a picture that proudly hangs in the sports hall today.

Given those antecedents it’s hardly surprising that Durham spawned some notable early players, not least Frederick Lohden from Hartlepool who was a massive specimen for the era – he was the biggest boy in the school First XV when aged just 15. Lohden was an early star for the Durham County team and made a notable try-scoring debut for England against Wales in 1893 but had to retire prematurely through injury.