Footballer starts in elite British match after just six games

American running back Pete Dawkins played just six games before starting in the 1959 Oxford-Cambridge match, demonstrating that in the past 'mainstream' athletes transitioned to rugby much more quickly than the projections of recent 'crossover' proposals.

Today's edition of London's Times recounts the familiar story of the former Army star's revolutionizing lineouts with football-style throw-ins. But details that Dawkins had precious little game experience before appearing the 'Varsity Match,' then one of the year's biggest games, are a revelation.

It was in the 1959 University Match that the American Dawkins unveiled his famous torpedo throw [i.e., spiral pass], deliberately overshooting his line-out jumpers to unleash his captain Malcolm Phillips, already an England centre, and take the Cambridge defence by surprise. Dawkins had played barely half a dozen games of rugby when he won his first Blue, making rapid progress from the Brasenose College side, through Oxford Greyhounds – the university second XV – to the first team. Two tries on his senior debut against Blackheath followed by another good showing against Major Stanley's XV persuaded Phillips to include Dawkins at Twickenham.

Paul Bolton's account brings Dawkins' athleticism to the fore:

'I used to throw an American football around after our rugby training sessions but what started out as an attempt to exert a degree of colonial influence into rugby turned into a secret tactic for the Varsity Match,' Dawkins said. 'In those days the wingers threw the ball into the line-out and most did it underarm. But we had the idea that if I could throw it overarm 40 yards past the forwards at a line-out, it might give our threequarters an advantage.

High-caliber mainstream athletes quickly coming up to speed in rugby, and domestic sports skills refined to create innovative rugby tactics. The question is: how is America working to capture and systematically refine this dynamic?

Comments

[Davie]

One reason that the transition might have happen more quickly in that era, is that the sports were actually much more similar. It was NOT unusual for a quarterback to slot a drop goal during a game of gridiron.

These sports have grown in vastly different directions through law and rule changes as well as the advancement of equipment in the North American version of the contact sport.

[Old Boy]

Throwing in a line-out is the same movement as snapping for a punt or field-goal. Oh, all the foreigners I have marvelled doing just that in days of yore...*reminisces with Chariots of Fire music playing in the background*
How Raphaël Ibanez is able to throw in using just one arm, now that has always marvelled me.

[Chuck Norris]

Chuck Norris asks - has Pete Dawkins been in touch with Kevin Roberts to get CitiGroup involved in sponsorship, and to bring RWC 2015 to the USA?

Dawkins has considerable weight at Citi, and is probably the most storied living American rugby player you have never heard of.

Get him involved, for goodness sake!