A (soggy) trip to Dartmouth

And maybe that’s how it’s best to remember Bill Luscombe – as a teller of “interesting tales”, some of which may even have been true. Jon says he was useless with dates and – from checking other parts of his history - it appears he wasn’t too hot on names, places or events either.

But he wasn’t alone in that way. I’m reading a book by Julian Norridge called Can we have our balls back, please? (How the British invented sport – and then almost forgot how to play it). In this, Norridge looks at the historical background to over a dozen sports that were pretty much devised by the British. And, from what I’ve read so far, some pretty dodgy storytelling seems to have gone on.

For example, rugby union and the claim that William Webb Ellis invented the sport by picking up the ball in a school match at Rugby in 1823. He may well have run with the ball around then, but there’s more than a suggestion – according to this book (and, as I’ve done no further research myself, I’m reliant on its accuracy) – that countless other Rugby boys were doing likewise several years before 1823. Webb Ellis – a man known to blow his own trumpet on occasions – apparently never said anything about his role in the game’s invention and – allegedly - he only gets a mention in the whole process because a former pupil told his older brother about a random game when Webb Ellis was one of those who handled the ball. That older brother – Matthew Bloxham – then slips the story into a “looking back” article in the school magazine nearly sixty years afterwards. His explanation is later - without further checks being made - adopted by an Old Rugbeians committee set up in 1895 to defend the school’s honour against counter-claims about the game’s origins. Thereafter it becomes established “fact”.

Likewise, baseball and the efforts made to show it was a 100% American invention rather than a derivative of rounders, stoolball or even an old English game called “base ball”. The American game’s first recognised reporter – Henry Chadwick, a Devonian from Exeter – was firmly of the opinion baseball had English origins. This didn’t go down too well and the debate continued for decades with Albert Spalding, an ex-baseball star and founder of the sports goods manufacturer, being particularly keen on proving the sport’s American roots. Then, as his campaign reached its zenith in 1905, a letter was received from an old man claiming the game was invented by Abner Doubleday, a civil war hero, in a place called Cooperstown in 1839. This fitted Spalding’s agenda and became the “official” story to the extent the Baseball Hall of Fame was eventually established in Cooperstown.

But in 1939 just as – and Jon may appreciate this – the game was about to celebrate its "centenary", somebody throws a spanner in the works and demolishes the whole story. Now, according to Norridge, we’re left with a theory which says Abner Graves, who sent the 1905 letter, may have played baseball in the late 1830s with another Abner Doubleday altogether (perhaps a cousin of the Civil War man). This Abner Doubleday, in order to impress Graves and his young friends who’d not seen the game before, may have bragged - in an act of youthful bravado - that baseball was his own invention.

So what to make of this? Well, I’d be charitable to both Matthew Bloxham and Abner Graves for simply passing on something they’d both thought was true for sixty years of their lives. Equally, the Old Rugebeians and the baseball authorities may have naively accepted the word of Bloxham and Graves respectively because they “were there” and it’s respectful to acknowledge the memories of our elders. Alternatively, of course, you could accuse them of “lazy” history – failing to check sources – or even gleefully, wilfully accepting (and twisting) half-baked stories which neatly fitted their own agendas. Who knows? And, yes, I’ve taken my stories from a book in which I’ve already spotted inaccuracies….

I believe that the South Devon League was founded in 1887.

That makes it the oldest footballl league in the world!

My argument is that you shouldn't count when a league actually started, but when people started thinking about it. You know how slow Devonians are.

Nobody can prove me wrong, so that makes it true!