The first female “Springbok”

The first Springbok team arrived in the UK in September 1906 for a tour that would see them play all of the home nations, and France, before returning home in January 1907. In December the tour reached?˜London for their test-match against England, and the Lord Mayor of London celebrated their arrival with a ball.

Walter Trick, a dental surgeon at Guys Hospital?˜managed to get himself invited - perhaps to represent London Welsh, or possibly because his brother,George, had been a celebrated captain of Neath, Walter's home-town in south Wales. And Walter took along his five-year old daughter, Kathleen.

Quite what happened at that ball can only be guessed at, but clearly Walter and his daughter made something of an impact. Either?˜she went along to the ball?˜dressed as a Springbok player (though where she got the kit from is unclear?˜- unless?˜her uncle?˜gave it to her?), or the South Africans gave her a kit at the ball (it has been suggested that maybe she was a "mascot" at one of their London games, but its unlikely that teams had such things 100 years ago).

However she?˜came by the kit,?˜a proud father soon afterwards commissioned the portrait of his daughter (above), as it appears to be dated 1907. Perhaps it was a sixth birthday present?

A couple of years later the family returned to Neath, where Kathleen remained for the rest of her life, marrying John Samuel in 1927. She died in 1978 and does not seem to have had any children. The painting was found in a house clearance sale in 1998, purchased by the RFU, and restored. It is now in the collection of the Rugby Museum at Twickenham.

It is unlikely that Kathleen ever played?˜rugby - unlike ?˜she had no rugby-playing elder brothers to sneak her into a team, and she was too young (and probably too middle-class) to have played in any of the women's charity matches that were played in south Wales by munitions factory workers during the First World War?˜- but nonetheless her proud father made her a small footnote in rugby history. The first identifiable female figure in rugby kit.

Unless anyone knows better?